by Opal Edgar
Elise trembled up and Kemsit pushed up with her tail, her upper body wrapped round Elise’s waist, to prop the both of them upright.
“’Tis not meant to hold: simply bide us time,” Elise murmured so quietly I almost didn’t hear.
She was right. Already the tiny amount of blue sky we could see far above disappeared and caped thieves plunged towards us.
“Go through,” appeared on Alpheus’s slate as he pointed to the black hole.
Kemsit and Elise jumped in. Alpheus pushed me towards the buzzing black disk. I looked up one last time at the power thieves. The closest one’s teeth were as long as my forearm. I didn’t hesitate. Better the devil you don’t know than … Wait that wasn’t the right quote. There was no time to think. Alpheus was already halfway through. He grabbed my shirt and yanked. I tumbled to the other side.
Chapter 13
Back to the Beginning
As soon as I popped out, I rubbed my arms to clean them from the cold wet sensation of gate travelling. Alpheus ran his hands over the edge of the black hole. It smudged like paint. I helped with my sleeve. It was quite dark, so it was hard to see how much of the gate paint we were removing. The buzzing decreased as my shirt grew darker.
Elise was so tired that she had closed her eyes. Kemsit slithered off Elise’s shoulders. Her stomach left a sinuous trail in the dust. We were all here: safe, but stranded in the night. I quickly looked about. Round us were tall metal walls of corrugated iron and sleeping machines swallowing assembly line tongues. I couldn’t make out what they did, but, for once, the place felt familiar. I sighed. A stream of white fog rose out of my mouth. Peace and cold.
Elise’s profile shone from the unnatural yellow glow streaming down from broken skylights. It almost looked like we were surrounded by street lights. I took a step towards her but Alpheus put out his arm to stop me.
“Baas,” appeared on his slate. I didn’t understand but I could wait. He rubbed his hands together and the black smudges on them diminished. The paint gathered together in the centre of his hand, oily and black, until it rolled like a drop of ink in his palm. He nodded to my shirt and I started wiping the black trace there. Slowly it came off the fabric, rolled into a droplet and dripped on my index finger. I gave him the drop.
Elise’s eyes fluttered open.
“Did you manage to talk to Baas?” Kemsit asked a few metres away, poking her tongue at piled crates.
“No. Sir Baas remains at the summit. I left a message not to go home.”
Her eyes moved to Alpheus and all worry evaporated from her face. She broke into a glorious smile and jumped at his neck, hugging him fiercely. “’Tis a miracle you thoughtfully worked two doors open the moment we needed them!”
I looked at Alpheus the hero, unhesitant in front of danger, ready to leap at insane carrion-eaters and still capable of painting our escape route. Everybody had saved me, and this chaos had all been my fault. Again.
My shoes crunched on glass shards as I shuffled. Alpheus’s slate flashed back: “Don’t thank me.”
And he was modest too! Kemsit grew into a human shape again. She skipped to Alpheus and punched his chest.
“Of course we’ll thank you, you big lump of meat! You saved our skins! Right now there must only be wisps of foul carrion-eater’s breath left of Elise’s world! Yuck!” Kemsit shuddered. “I never saw anything like that. I’d have sworn it was impossible. They took over a whole world! The horrors they can do when they work together is crazy … Elise, I’m so sorry, centuries of work ...” Kemsit cringed.
What had I done?
I’d run away from Elise because I couldn’t face being the bad guy … but I should have known better than anyone that not doing anything had never stopped evil. From the beginning the power thieves were at my heels and I kept dragging them in my wake, hurting all the people that tried to help me. I’d run about like a headless chicken spreading salmonella. Now the home of countless kids was gone, all because the power thieves wanted Merlin. That had to stop.
“I’m fixing this. I don’t know how, but I’m going to do it. They’re after me and now they’re targeting you, and the ones you protect. I won’t let them. Whatever I have to do, or whatever I have to become, I’ll do it. And I’ll help you rebuild your world, Elise. An even better world. I’ll learn and I’ll spend every moment of my life— my death— whatever this is— to repay you.”
Elise shook her head.
“You do not owe me anything, Sir Tosho,” she said.
“I owe you a whole world!”
“Yeah, it’s getting to become a habit of yours,” Kemsit murmured.
I couldn’t even disagree with her. I was not only trouble, I was in trouble too.
“’Tis not your fault, they’ve been trying to get in for a long time. And now they are growing organised. Lil’Mon tells me recently they’ve been gathering under the banner of princes, ’tis what they call their new leaders.” Elise shrugged. “’Tis but the scope and strength of their attack I never expected. I thought a ghost’s nature was to remain alone and friendless.”
“So power thieves have never worked together before?” I wondered aloud.
“No. Power thieves are but an appellation for all the dead that grow by stealing other’s strength. They are the dead that refuse the spirit law and live on the edge of society. It doesn’t make them friends. Usually they stay in the shadows, alienated from everyone, attacking mainly each other. Masks when worn take over the body of the wearer and consume their power until nothing is left. Carrion-eaters physically eat the dead. And ghosts ... ghosts see people’s souls and can take them out of people’s bodies to do with as they please. I thought this was exaggerated. But ’tis my soul the power thieves were stealing through my world, not just my powers. I felt it. There was a ghost there.”
We all shuddered.
“Elise, I’m so sorry. It was me they wanted. I was indebted to you even before we met … I owe lots of people for what my father did. And all I have managed so far is to get your world destroyed.”
Kemsit slid between me and the others. “Stop beating yourself up. I know it’s your thing, but puh-lease! Dumb-dumb here doesn’t realise how valuable he is. He’s got Merlin right at his mercy!” She flicked her many strands of braided hair over her shoulders and enjoyed the commotion she created.
Alpheus sat down like a lump and shook his head from left to right. I guess that was a mix between consternation and surprise.
“’Tis most extraordinary. How?”
“I didn’t do anything. Merlin’s my soul,” I explained. “The Oracle said it’s because of him the power thieves are after me.”
Elise dropped down onto a crate. I could see millions of questions forming in her head. But she composed herself. How I got Merlin for a soul was less important right now than how we were going to fix everything. Elise rubbed her wrists thoughtfully. There was pity in her eyes when she looked at me again. She’d lost everything she’d been building for … I don’t know how many centuries – it was all my fault, and yet it was me she took pity on.
“No wonder they’re after you. Merlin is one of the most powerful spirits there is … was. Everyone thought he was doing something very big for the last few years,” she said. “Power thieves must have somehow learnt that Merlin is at his weakest, so they’re getting ready to do what they do best. They enlisted a ghost and they’re going to try to eat Merlin.”
I too sat down. “The Oracle said they wanted revenge on Merlin. That he’d hurt a prince ... I think, maybe ... He never said anything about them wanting to eat me.”
“Whatever the motive might be, eating power is what they do.” Elise grimaced.
“Won’t anyone try to stop them? Doesn’t the Oracle—” I started.
Kemsit laughed, cutting me off. “Don’t you think he’s busy enough with people always trying to infringe the life/death barrier?”
“Well isn’t there, like, a death police?”
They all blinked blan
kly at me.
“You can’t tell me it doesn’t exist. That people let bloody cannibals run loose and steal their eyes and homes whenever they want to!” I yelled out. “Aren’t people scared?”
“They’ve never done that much damage. I don’t think any of us ever saw power thieves organised before,” Kemsit said after a mild hesitation. “Or in such number. Power thieves are like, I don’t know, pirates. They don’t usually get together long enough for it to work. They have had a few princes who controlled groups for a while, but it was small scale stuff … and they ended up eating the weaker ones anyway.”
“So you’re saying I’m the only one who wants to stop them?”
“No, Sir Tosho,” Elise concluded. “’Tis ‘we’ that you want to say. WE are the only ones who want to stop them.”
“It’s dangerous,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s why we’re not letting you out of our sight,” Kemsit said.
This was my call, I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. I wouldn’t be a spectator any longer. I opened my mouth to spill it all out and I remembered something. Shame burned my cheeks and I swallowed my misplaced pride.
“I lost the only clue in the chase,” I confessed. “The Oracle said the bottle we got from the mask in the ship was the answer. It’s a door and—”
“Yep, a black liquid door.” Kemsit said.
A black door coming out of a tiny bottle filled with inky petroleum-looking vinegar ... or paint … The same idea hit the two of us at the same time. We turned to Alpheus, horrified.
“How did you make the door?” I asked.
We stared as Alpheus drew out a tiny bottle filled with jet black viscous ink. I panicked and kicked a lying metal bar up into my hands and swirled round. I stood ready to defend us from all the monsters about to spring forth to eat our heads ... any second. Alpheus waved round a: “What’s going on?” slate.
“It doesn’t look like we’re in any immediate danger,” Kemsit said to me.
“This is where the first mask who attacked me came from: I don’t think we’re safe,” I said.
But I was the only one worried about that. My three companions actually looked relieved. I frowned at them.
“’Tis time to discover exactly who we’re dealing with, Sir Tosho.”
“Cool, then let’s start by finding out where we are,” Kemsit suggested.
She climbed over the largest machine. When she couldn’t reach any higher, she turned into a cobra to slither all the way up to a vent hole near the ceiling. She stretched on a tiny ledge, her head darting left and right.
“’Tis the lair?” Elise asked.
“Don’t know, don’t think so – it looks really big!”
“What do you mean?”
Kemsit slithered back down to us. “I don’t think it’s a lair, it’s not hidden at all, we’re in a city possibly bigger than Alexandria.
Alpheus was the first to the rolling door. He tried to push it and the metal groaned angrily. He immediately stopped. I ran to his side and showed him the handle to manoeuver the door up. This was clearly not technology found in gladiator dens.
The night air got in: freezing cold. Kemsit coiled up my leg and torso and snuggled against my neck. I pretended not to be bothered. We stepped out onto a cobbled street. This would have been a typical industrial row of factories, except the other side of the street was missing. Including half of the asphalt. The road abruptly stopped, gnawed away by giant teeth. Someone had hacked down whatever should have been there, on the other footpath, and instead was a vast wasteland of dirt.
The dirt highway was easily 30 metres wide and stretched for kilometres in both directions. A tall barbed wire fence sat neatly in its middle. Large blocks of cement, steel poles and piles of gravel waited to become a wall on the other side of the barbs. Sleeping cement mixers and cranes loomed just behind the materials. And all of it was covered in snow. My face must have betrayed me.
“Sir Tosho, are you faint? Do you know this place?”
“Oh this is bad,” I said. “It’s the death strip.”
My three companions looked at me as if I’d gone crazy. I shivered, but it wasn’t from the cold. A ghastly wind froze my heart and I lifted my hands to protect Kemsit. Her bright red skin was getting paler and paler. She tightened her grip round my neck and I pulled her off a little before she choked me. Her teeth were chattering. I lifted my jacket collar to protect her a little.
“We’re in Berlin: this is my home.”
“You’re right, this IS bad!” Kemsit said.
“But something’s very wrong.”
“We cannot be in the land of the living,” Elise cut in. “We have no permit.”
“I don’t think the power thieves care about that,” Kemsit said.
“It’s winter!” I exclaimed. “When the hell did it become winter? I died in May! And that was … I don’t know: four days ago?”
Kemsit snickered.
“Time doesn’t feel the same when you have eternity in front of you,” Elise said.
But I couldn’t concentrate. My family had coped without my salary for half a year already. Had my cousin managed to keep up med school? I blinked the tears away. I wanted to see them so bad.
Elise’s hand dropped to my shoulder. And I suddenly realised she was still talking.
“Sir Tosho, may I ask who killed you?” Her lips were turning blue, a few shades darker than her dress.
“Some idiot and his gang because he thought his girlfriend liked me,” I said.
“Are you quite sure, Sir Tosho? Isn’t it a strange coincidence that the power thieves chasing you have a direct portal to your city?”
I stared, dumbstruck. Both Alpheus and Elise rubbed their arms to bring back a little warmth into their limbs. Alpheus was still in his ridiculous roman toga and Elise in her 17th century puffy dress, leaking lace and blue fabric everywhere. She might have been warmer than the rest of them, but if anyone saw us they’d take us for nutcases.
I blanched. If anyone saw us we’d end up as new lumps of clay in the Oracle’s palace.
“Get back in!” I furiously whispered.
I pushed them back into the factory with my open arms. Alpheus and Elise backpedalled dangerously on the frozen threshold. Elise caught herself on a post that proclaimed the factory on strike. I closed the doors behind us, hoping we were the only people insane enough to trudge about in the snow at night.
“Kemsit, you can’t look like a cobra. No one has cobras here, and you all need to dress in clothes that will blend in. Hopefully there’ll be some overalls in here somewhere.”
It took Alpheus stubbing his toe, Kemsit falling on the floor laughing herself to death and Elise finding a cupboard big enough to change in for the group to be dressed in 20th century clothes. Except …
“Alpheus, you have to take the helmet off,” I said.
He shook his head and Kemsit stared, looking from him to me as if it was a duel. I could deal with the dangling slate, he had to talk somehow, but the helmet?
“No one wears helmets now. Everyone will look at us,” I insisted, getting closer.
On his slate appeared: “NEVER!!!” He stood his ground threateningly, crossing his arms over his chest. I wasn’t going to pull it off him, but … Kemsit edged towards him.
“Seriously?” I said.
Kemsit tripped over the legs of her overalls, knocking into Alpheus’s knees. He looked down at her before helping her up.
“Not going to happen, is it?” she said, as he lifted her up until she sat on his shoulder.
Elise immediately went to Kemsit’s feet to roll the legs of the trousers up. Elise looked so cute in overalls, and so much more approachable. Her dress and the axe were stuffed in a large bag we’d found in the closet.
“Fine,” I said, shaking my head.
Dead people were so weird!
Alpheus lowered Kemsit back down once the trouser legs were rolled up. She had barely touched the ground and her sleeves got cau
ght in a machine. She pulled free, knocking over planks and dust. The sleeves dangled over her hands. Annoyed, she flapped her arms about with a mixture of anger and defeat. “How can you stand it? Everything you wear is itchy!”
She was a real little goblin. Elise tried to fix her up, but Kemsit kept hopping round.
Alpheus shrugged it all away and lifted his slate: “Now we go where Tosho died.”
“Couldn’t you just draw a gate for us to get away from here?” I asked.
“We need answers,” appeared on his slate.
We did, but, oh boy, I did not want to go there.
Chapter 14
The Crime Scene
Watch guards were everywhere to stop anyone from getting close to the barbed wire. It was lucky we were on the right side. To make it even clearer that they didn’t want anyone near, they’d even plastered the place with large boards bearing ugly words for everyone to read.
“I think you’ve found a friend.” Kemsit laughed, holding onto Alpheus.
“I don’t think so,” I said, lifting the bucket over my head so as to read better.
I had to hide my face, so no one from my life could recognise me, and a bucket was the only thing we’d found. Alpheus had slashed a slit through it, but it was so thin, and the night was so thick, that I wasn’t always sure what I was looking at.
The large red print in front of me said: “Off-limits to all unauthorised civilian and military personnel”, which was fair enough. And then the next one went on: “Stop and stand still, or be shot". A third one closer to the wall made it absolutely clear with: “Warning shots from this point”.
Kemsit pulled the bucket back down over my face. She was right, of course. There was no way we wouldn’t be spotted, but we simply didn’t want to be pulled aside or for someone to recognise me. We crept into the city, tiptoeing from corner to corner, praying that no living person saw us. We scurried forth, thankful for the cover offered by the broken streetlights.
At each squeak in our path, I imagined us as great thoughtless piles of mud hanging next to the Oracle. I didn’t want any of us to be turned into a golem. I’d never been so scared of shadows in my life.
