And before I could really think about it, I sprang into the air and soared after him.
15
MALADON CASTLE
I hadn’t flown this fast in my life. Yet Destin appeared up to the task. My eyes began watering with the speed and I had to put on my goggles.
I managed to keep Endemen in sight as we flew higher and higher. Finally, we reached such an altitude that we plunged into a bank of low-level clouds.
My stomach seemed to lurch into my throat. I couldn’t see one hand in front of my face. I was flying blind, and I was terrified that I would plough right into Endemen if he halted for some reason.
Thankfully, cold and drenched with moisture from the clouds, I finally flew free of the mists and took up the chase once more. I could see Endemen ahead. He was wearing no goggles but seemed to have no problem seeing. He was flying in a prone position, his arms at his sides. His bowler hat was still perched neatly on his head, unaffected by our speed and the buffeting winds.
Finally, he started to slow down. I matched his reduction in velocity. I could feel Destin around my waist.
Its chain links were like ice.
As Endemen slowed, he also began to descend.
I looked down and gasped.
Spread out far below us was a rugged mountain shrouded in blackness, though it was fully light out. And on the very topmost part of that mountain was an enormous building.
I pointed downward and continued to follow Endemen as he hurtled towards the dirt.
He landed smoothly with not even a stumble – I had to admit, the lout was a remarkable flyer, far better than me.
I hovered ten feet off the ground, waiting. The building I had seen from above was now revealed to me.
It was a castle with high, blackened stone walls, battlements and turrets. It looked a bit like Stacks in Wormwood, only bigger.
Endemen was marching towards the largest pair of gates I had ever seen. They made the massive doors back at Stacks look puny by comparison.
A flag waved from the topmost battlement. As I gazed upward, I could see the symbol clearly. It was the same image that the black-booted and helmeted lads back in Greater True had carried on their flag: the star with two terrifying eyes at its centre.
When he reached the portal, Endemen took out his wand and waved it from left to right in front of the massive entrance. The mighty gates silently swung inward.
He passed through the opening. And then the doors began to close.
I drew a breath, put my head down and shot through the narrowing gap, clearing it seconds before the wood thudded shut behind me.
I landed softly and peered cautiously around. I could see Endemen. He was just ahead of me. And, as I watched him, my heart stood still.
His suit, shoes and bowler hat vanished. In their place was a luxuriously long robe the colour of blood, with a black hood. As he turned to the side, I could see that his face had changed too. All parts of it had elongated and become hideously demonic. His complexion had turned so pale it looked silver. A thin, sharply angled blood-red beard now covered the lower part of his chin. He looked like a vulture with a man’s body.
He began walking and I followed him, taking in as much as I could.
The walls and floors were stone, cold to the touch, and indeed an icy chill seemed to radiate from them. The corridor was ill lit, casting flickering shadows here and there. Dozens of corridors snaked off the main one I was on, and blackened and bolted doors lined the hall. My mind conjured images of prisoners behind each of them, awaiting their doom.
Next instant I heard a low moan followed by a scream emanating from deep inside the bowels of the place, which gave credence to my thoughts. I shivered and drew my cloak closer around me.
Endemen had picked up his pace, striding purposefully down the centre of the wide, darkened corridor, and I hurried after.
I heard it before I saw it. I knew that sound well. Slithering, followed by screeching.
A second later, the creature turned the corner and came into full, towering, terrifying view.
It was a jabbit, an enormous serpent with at least two hundred and fifty heads (no one faced with one had ever lived long enough to properly count them). One bite from a single venomous head was enough to drop a two-ton creta.
Endemen lazily held up his wand, and the jabbit stopped dead in its tracks. As he walked past, Endemen casually patted one of its venomous heads.
Endemen walked on, leaving the jabbit blocking the corridor in front of me. All Wugs had been taught to fear the jabbit above every other beast, and I was no exception. Before I could move, the trunk of the serpent passed right next to me. One of its poisonous heads actually brushed my cloak.
The thing froze. And so did I.
Each of its heads twitched back and forth.
They were smelling me!
I was afraid to move, terrified to even breathe.
I stared at the awful creature as it swayed back and forth next to me. I willed it to move on. For one agonizing moment, my gaze locked with one of the pairs of eyes. Invisible though I was, I was sure it could see me.
Go away. Please.
And then the most amazing thing happened.
The jabbit slithered away and disappeared down the corridor.
I let out my breath, shaking and nauseous with relief. I looked wildly around.
Endemen was gone.
16
PEOPLE OF THE GLASS
I hurried down the stone passageway until I reached a large chamber that had multiple corridors fanning off it. I had no idea which one, if any, Endemen had passed down.
Footsteps sounded in the distance and I quickly picked one option and shot down it.
There were a number of doors along this way, also all shut. As I hesitated, a door across the passage opened and a short, brutish man with a trim beard and only a single eye (the other socket being empty) walked out. Like Endemen he was dressed in a long black cloak with a red hood.
Without thinking, I shot my invisible self past him and into the room before the door closed.
I huddled back against the wall and tried to catch my breath.
That’s when I heard the voice.
‘Please,’ it wailed. ‘Please, don’t.’
It was a woman’s voice, ragged with pain. I gripped my wand and ran round the corner.
What I saw staggered me.
There was a line of looking glasses hanging on one wall. Inside each glass was a person. They were clothed in filthy rags. A mother and daughter were trapped in looking glasses hung side by side, crying desperately. Their hair was black and hung down around their shoulders.
On the other side of the room stood a man with a wand. He was leisurely pointing it at the people in the glass.
Unlike the bloke I’d seen leaving earlier, this man was tall and broad-shouldered, with a massive, veined neck. His face was flushed and his eyes were set too close together, giving him a permanently overfocused, menacing expression. His beard was large and bushy. He wore the same black-and-red cloak.
He lifted his wand and his mouth twisted into a malicious smile.
He fired another spell at one of the looking glasses, and the person trapped there doubled over and screamed.
As I looked on in horror, I saw what appeared to be sparkling dust falling from inside the glass and gathering in a bottle that had been placed on the floor directly below it. There were bottles lined up under each glass. All of them held some measure of the sparkling dust.
‘Please, don’t,’ screamed a woman.
‘Mercy,’ pleaded a man behind the glass.
‘Have p-pity,’ moaned another man, who was on his knees, hunched over in agony.
I saw the bearded man’s cruel smile deepen.
Lined up in deep niches on the walls behind him were glass bottles, all filled with the sparkling dust. And each bottle was stoutly corked.
The bearded man called out to one poor bloke trapped in the looking glass. ‘Here now.
You’re going to love being an Ordinary, eh?’
An Ordinary? What did that mean?
When he raised his wand again, I matched this movement, readying an incantation of attack.
But then I hesitated. If I performed magic, I would reveal myself. And yet, I had to stop him.
I willed my wand to become what it had been when I had first acquired it.
The Elemental.
It grew into a spear taller than me that was the colour of gold.
I hurled it at the man as he prepared another spell to cast.
The Elemental struck him full in the chest, lifting him off his feet and sending him sailing against the far wall.
He hit the stone with a heavy thud. Two of the glass bottles were dislodged and fell on top of him, but the glass didn’t break.
The Elemental automatically returned to my hand as the man slid to the floor, unconscious.
His wand had fallen from his hand and rolled across the floor.
I stooped and picked it up. It was made of blackened wood, as though it had once been afire.
I slipped it into my pocket and turned to the people in the looking glasses.
‘Hello?’ I said quietly. ‘Can you tell me who you are?’
They were silent and I realized I was invisible.
I turned my ring the right way round and my invisibility vanished. I edged closer still.
As I did so, one man slammed himself against the glass, scratching and clawing at the surface in an attempt to escape.
I watched in horror as he slumped down and curled into a ball, his body shaking.
I backed away and looked down at the glass bottle under him. It was over half full with the dust.
I glanced at the looking glass that held the young girl.
She turned her face to me, and with a stab of horror I saw that her eyes were nearly blank. I looked at the woman in the glass beside her. Her mother. Her eyes were completely blank.
I looked down at the bottle underneath her looking glass. It was very nearly full.
I hesitated, torn. I had no idea how to free these people; but if I left them, they would end up as slaves in Greater True. For now I realized: slaves was what they were.
‘Oi! Who the blazes are you?’
I looked around to see the man I’d slipped past earlier, standing there, staring dead at me with his one eye.
He raised his wand and fired a spell at me.
I deflected it with my Elemental, then hurled the Elemental right at him, willing the spear to do my bidding.
It hit him with such force that he simply vanished into nothing; the Elemental banked to the left and returned to me.
I looked at the burned hole in the floor where the man had been. I had just killed a Maladon.
I could hear voices. Instinctively, I raced over and picked up the bottle of dust underneath the mother’s looking glass, stoppered it and shoved it into my pocket. I reversed my ring and turned invisible once more.
I ran to the door, eased it open and saw that the hall was clear.
I slipped out and ran down the passageway in the opposite direction from which I’d come.
I turned the corner and had to slam myself against the wall as a half dozen cloaked Maladons raced past me, wands raised and ready.
I waited for them to be well out of sight before I hurried off, stopping dead once I rounded the next corner.
The garm was only twenty feet from me. But I had never seen a garm like this before. Like the others of its breed, it had four huge legs, armoured skin, a mouth that breathed fire, and blood that ran perpetually down its massive chest.
Yet there was one significant difference.
This garm was tethered to a huge leash made of chain links. It was sniffing the cobbles and was being led down the corridor by an enormous man.
This was not good. Garms could pick up a scent from miles away. They must have figured out I was invisible. As I watched, paralysed with fear, it slowly lifted its head.
I pushed open the door closest to me, leaped inside and bolted it behind me.
Only just in time. The garm smashed into the door, growling and snarling.
I tapped my right leg with my wand and said, ‘Pass-pusay.’
Absolutely nothing happened. I was still rooted to the spot. There had to be something here that blocked that magical exit. So now what the Hel should I do?
I looked at the Elemental, still fully formed in my hand. Then I looked at the opposite wall.
I had never attempted what I was about to try. But I really didn’t have any other option.
I gripped the Elemental tightly, willing it to do what I wanted it to. I thought back to what Alice had told me on that battlefield long ago.
When you have no other friends, it will be there for you.
The garm hit the door with another blow and this time it toppled inward. The beast and the man leading it burst into the room.
It was now or never.
I threw the Elemental directly at the far wall.
But this time I didn’t let go!
I was lifted off my feet and the tip of the Elemental slammed into the wall, dissolved the stone and, together, we hurtled through the fresh opening.
We shot through another room, smashed through another wall, and passed into another chamber.
We hit and exploded through one more wall and I felt my heels hit the floor.
The room we had just landed in was truly enormous.
I could barely see the ceiling, which was made of glass. There were colourful banners covering the walls. They all held the symbol I had seen earlier. The five-pointed star with the terrifying pair of eyes.
And then my gaze alighted on what looked very much like a throne. It was huge and made of what appeared to be solid gold with a curved armrest. It had a high back emblazoned with the same awful star symbol.
There was a man sitting on it.
He was shrouded all in red, including the hood covering his head. His hands poked out from the sleeves and they were unnaturally elongated and curved.
And standing in front of him, in his own long robes, was Endemen.
My entrance had not been quiet. Both of them were staring in my direction. And though I was still invisible, they well knew, by the destruction that had unfolded, that someone was there.
Endemen had his wand out and pointed it towards me.
But the creature on the throne simply waved his hand, and I felt the very air around me begin to harden.
I couldn’t move.
And something else happened.
In my head came a voice.
Go now. Go now or you are lost.
With what felt like a superhuman effort, I pointed the Elemental up and, like a fired morta, I soared up, up until I smashed right through the ceiling, sending huge chunks of glass plummeting.
Free.
Or so I thought.
17
HOME AGAIN
I lay prone in the air, clutching the Elemental, willing Destin to fly faster than it ever had before.
When I looked back, I saw no fewer than six Maladons soaring after me, led by the lethal Endemen.
I knew they couldn’t see me. But somehow they could track me.
Spells blasted towards me. I rolled and dived and then shot upward, dodging them all.
Frantic thoughts ripped through my mind. My wand was my Elemental and vice versa. Well, why couldn’t it be both at the same time?
I attached a magical tether to the Elemental. I hurled it directly at the Maladons. It blasted forward like a runaway train. They were heading right for it though they couldn’t see it.
When it was ten feet from them, I muttered, ‘Impacto.’
A white light blasted from the Elemental and smashed into the Maladons, flinging them out of the sky.
Endemen and two of the Maladons had managed to somehow avoid my spell. They followed in grim pursuit, as though they knew my every move. But how?
Then it struck me.
The wand!
The blackened wand I had taken from the man in the room of glass. I groped in my pocket and pulled it out, snapping it in half and dropping the pieces to the ground. Then I swooped upward, praying that my hunch was right.
I looked back.
Sure enough, Endemen and his group were still heading downward.
They touched down, and I saw Endemen pick up the broken pieces of the wand and look around.
Then he looked up and screamed the bloodiest scream I’d ever heard. Even the shriek of the jabbits had never inspired such terror in me. I shuddered and urged Destin onward.
Reaching for my wand, I tapped my leg and said, ‘Pass-pusay.’
I had one destination in mind.
A moment later my feet hit something solid. I staggered a bit and then stood upright.
I was on the doorstep of Empyrean.
I turned my ring around and waved my wand; the door opened and I passed quickly through.
With another wave of my wand, the door shut and bolted.
The next instant someone lifted me into the air. Delph.
‘Vega Jane!’ he shouted in my ear, nearly deafening me. ‘You’re alive.’
‘Blimey,’ I said. ‘I’m right next to you, Delph. I could hear fine until you screamed in my ear.’
But I smiled and hugged him back.
Around his feet danced Harry Two, barking his head off.
Over Delph’s shoulder I could see what looked like most of the staff of Empyrean, with Pillsbury and Mrs Jolly at the head. There was an assortment of floor lamps, coatracks, the rake, the wheelbarrow and two marble statues, one a man in chain mail and the other a sinewy horse.
Pillsbury, his armour squeaking slightly, lurched forward.
‘’Tis good to see you, Mistress Vega,’ he said. ‘Master Delph told us that you were off to . . . We thought, well, we thought perhaps . . .’
‘Me too, Pillsbury. But I’m back, safe and sound.’ I looked around. ‘Where’s Petra?’ I asked.
‘In her room,’ Delph said. He wouldn’t meet my eye.
Vega Jane and the Rebels’ Revolt Page 9