“We go in,” said Big Aus. “No way are we giving up, not when we’re so close. Show us the way, Shaman.”
I led them towards Traitor’s Gate, indicating which flagstones they should avoid treading on. We had to approach the gate by a slow, indirect route to avoid the protective magics floating unseen in the air. I made the others hop on one foot, crouch down and rise up, and even walk backwards. Mostly for my own amusement, but occasionally because there were real traps to be avoided. Coffin Jobe would never have been able to get them in. There were wards present that would have fried his mind just for looking at them and places where only knowledge of the right passWords kept us all alive. But eventually we came to Traitor’s Gate, and I led the way through the great stone maw that was the only entrance into the castle complex. A gateway into horror, death, and worse than death for all too many people. I kept my Sight strictly focused so I wouldn’t have to See things I didn’t want to, but even so my skin crawled all the way. It’s not easy walking through a place you know can kill you horribly in a hundred ways if you let your concentration drop.
I could still feel the screams, even if I couldn’t hear them.
Once through the gate and into the enclosed cobbled courtyard, it was all calm and quiet. The ghosts were outside, the Yeomen Warder patrols couldn’t see or hear us, and all that stood between us and the ravens was the locked door of their lodging house. I froze as I heard approaching footsteps and gestured urgently for the others to stand still and silent. Half a dozen Yeomen Warders came walking out of the shadows, chatting quietly. I cursed them silently. Dealing with the ghosts had taken longer than I’d thought, and the patrol had come around again. The bright red and gold uniforms looked quaintly old-fashioned, but the men inside them looked hard and competent and experienced. One of them had a raven perched on his shoulder and was feeding it grapes that looked very much like eyeballs.
“That’s a raven?” Strange Chloe said quietly. “That’s it? I was expecting something a bit more special. Not just an oversized crow!”
“Don’t show your ignorance,” I said firmly. “Ravens are the Rolls-Royce of the crow family.”
“Are you sure they can’t see or hear us?” said the Dancing Fool, shifting uncertainly from foot to foot.
“Are they rushing towards us, yelling terrible oaths and shooting at us with great big shooty things?” I said. “Then no, they can’t see or hear us.”
“Let the Yeomen open the lodging house for us,” said Big Aus. “And then we kill them all.”
“Ravens, or Yeomen Warders?” said the Dancing Fool.
“Just the ravens,” I said quickly. “Spill human blood in this place, and you’ll set off every alarm they’ve got.”
“No,” Big Aus said flatly. “Kill them all, ravens and men, and anyone else who gets in our way.”
I decided that this had gone far enough. I would have liked more time to take care of my friends before I had to take down Big Aus, but the secret of a field agent is to be flexible. So I pulled my concealing glamour back into my torc and let the others suddenly appear in the courtyard. The Yeomen Warders reacted immediately, producing really big guns out of nowhere and yelling for us to surrender. The Dancing Fool howled an ancient Scottish battle cry and charged the guards, moving so quickly I could barely follow him. He was in and among them in a moment, somehow never where their guns were pointing. With déjà fu, he could actually dodge bullets. I’d seen him do it.
At close combat, the Yeomen Warders never stood a chance.
They couldn’t lay a hand on the Dancing Fool, for all their skill. He knew what they were going to do almost before the thought had entered their heads, and he moved like the trained dancer he was, every move calculated and graceful, fast and brutal. But the sounds of combat brought more Yeomen Warders running into the courtyard, charging forward to join the fray.
The Dancing Fool really was one of the best fighters I’d ever seen, but in the end he never stood a chance. Outnumbered and surrounded, the only futures left for him to see were the ones where the Yeomen Warders inevitably beat the shit out of him. He went down still fighting, but he went down and did not rise again. Battered and bruised, the Yeomen Warders stood over his unconscious body, breathing hard.
Strange Chloe might have saved him. With her anger raised, her terrible scorching stare could have raked through the massed guards like a machine gun. But of course, I couldn’t allow that. So I just moved in behind her while her whole attention was fixed on the fight, and then showed her the same nerve pinch I’d shown Coffin Jobe. Strange Chloe sighed once, her knees buckled, and I caught her and lowered her carefully to the cobbled ground. I didn’t want her hurting herself. I straightened up, feeling rather pleased with myself. All three of my colleagues safely taken out of the game, with none of them realising it was due to me.
I could probably have taken the Dancing Fool down too, before he got to the Yeomen Warders, but I never liked him much.
It was only then that I looked around for Big Aus, and the smile froze on my lips as I discovered he was nowhere to be seen. I raced over to the ravens’ lodging house, but the door was still firmly locked. The ravens were safe. But Big Aus wasn’t there. Well, of course he wasn’t there; he’d never really been interested in the ravens. Everything he’d said, everything he’d done, had just been cover for something else.
His crime of the century.
I glared quickly about me and caught a glimpse of a dark figure slipping silently into the stone passageway that led to Whitechapel Tower. Immediately I was off and running after him, knowing for sure now what it was he was after. And I’d made it possible, through my involvement. I got us in here, past the ghosts and the traps. I gave the Dancing Fool to the Yeomen Warders, thus holding their attention. But even so . . . I still couldn’t believe Big Aus thought he could get away with this.
I subvocalised my activating Words, and the golden armour held inside my torc shot out to cover my whole body in a moment. To the Yeomen Warders I must have seemed to appear out of nowhere as I dropped the no-see-me glamour. A golden statue of a man, smooth and seamless, glowing in the night as I raced through the stone passageway faster than any normal man could have managed. When I wear the Drood armour I am supernaturally fast, and strong, and impervious to harm. The great secret weapon of the Drood family, whereby we are able to take on gods and monsters and beat the living crap out of them until they remember their place.
More human guards appeared before me, crying out startled orders to halt and be recognised, but I was through and past them before they could even react. Combat sorcerers waved their arms and shouted harsh Words, but their magics shattered harmlessly against my golden armour. An automatic weapon opened fire from an upper window, but my armour just absorbed the bullets, or let them pockmark the old stone wall behind me. Half a dozen guards came together to block the entrance to Whitechapel Tower, determined to keep me out, and I didn’t have the time to stop and reason with them. They didn’t know the Australian fox was already in the henhouse. So I ploughed right through them, throwing them aside with my armour’s more than human strength, hoping I didn’t hurt them too badly.
They really should have known better than to try to stop a Drood about his duty.
I pounded up the stone steps two at a time to the great chamber at the top of Whitechapel Tower, but by the time I got there Big Aus had already entered the Jewel House and was smiling happily at the Crown Jewels laid out behind the enclosing iron bars. He looked around as I lurched into the Jewel House, took in my golden armour, and laughed breathlessly. I stood very still just inside the doorway, peering about me through the featureless golden mask that covered my face. (I could have put eyeholes in the mask, but I never did. I could see perfectly well through the mask, and besides . . . a featureless face mask spooks the hell out of the bad guys. Mostly.) Big Aus gestured grandly for me to enter, and I did so, my golden feet thudding loudly on the bare stone floor. Big Aus backed away, putting the Crown Jewe
ls between us. The crowns and the diadems, the diamonds and rubies, the glorious regalia of centuries past.
Enough wealth to make any man a king.
Big Aus grinned at me, his dark eyes full of mockery. “So; Shaman Bond is a Drood. Didn’t see that one coming. But it doesn’t matter. I’ve planned this all so very carefully, you see, that not even a Drood field agent can stop me now. I chose my team so very carefully: greedy enough to go where even angels would be too sensible to tread, and dumb enough to swallow all that nonsense about the ravens. After all, the Tower could always get more ravens . . . I talked enough about my plans in all the right places that I just knew one of my team would turn out to be a Drood in disguise. After all, I was the one who sent your family the anonymous tip in the first place, just to make sure you’d get involved . . . Didn’t think it would be you, though, Shaman. No offence, but you never struck me as smart enough . . .”
I didn’t say anything. Just kept moving around the great circular display so he had to keep retreating before me.
“I needed a Drood, you see,” said Big Aus. “I knew I’d never get past all the defences here without a Drood’s help. I really thought the Dancing Fool was the Drood. He was a fighter, after all, and surely no one could really be that dumb and that arrogant . . . Anyway, you played your part wonderfully. Got me past the defences, drew off all the human guards, and bought me enough time to get to the Crown Jewels. I’m obliged to you. Really.”
“The Jewels are defended,” I said. I couldn’t stand the smugness in his voice anymore. “And while you might have got in, you’ll never get out.”
“Of course I will,” said Big Aus. “You can’t stop me. I am prepared. Even for a Drood.”
And suddenly there in his hand was an Aboriginal pointing bone. A small discoloured human bone, baptised in blood and murder magic. An Aboriginal shaman who knew what he was doing could point it at things that shouldn’t be in this world and make them disappear. Big Aus stabbed the pointing bone at me, and something slammed against my armoured chest like a cannonball. The sound echoed through the Jewel House, as though someone had just struck a great golden bell, but I didn’t move. I felt no impact inside my marvellous armour. I advanced slowly on Big Aus as he stabbed the bone at me again and again, and every time the impact and the sound was less.
Big Aus shrugged quickly, stuffed the pointing bone back into his pocket, and gabbled something in a language I didn’t understand. Which worried me just a bit, because my torc was supposed to translate every language I heard, or at the very least supply best-guess subtitles. These words were so old, so ancient and separate, that they predated the Druids who eventually became the Droods. Big Aus really had done his homework.
I was almost within arm’s reach of him. I showed him a golden fist, with spikes rising up from the golden knuckles. He wasn’t smiling anymore, his voice strained by the uncivilised words, his broad red face shining with sweat. He backpedaled so fast he was almost running, but he still stayed close to the Crown Jewels, refusing to be driven away. And then he spat out the last few words, and a snake big as all the world appeared out of nowhere and wrapped itself around me.
It was huge beyond bearing, its coils big as tube trains, superimposed on the Jewel House but no less real for that, twisting slowly as the coils tightened around me. It wasn’t a real snake, of course. This was the spirit of a Snake, an ancient ur-spirit in snake form, called back out of the Dreaming by Words that should never have been spoken. I couldn’t believe any Aboriginal shaman would have willingly surrendered these Words to Big Aus, no matter what he was promised. Spirits like this should never be summoned back into our limited physical world; they always have their own agenda.
Big Aus was chanting more Words now at the iron bars surrounding the Crown Jewels. Protective spells sparked and sputtered and went out, and the metal bars dropped and ran away like melting candle wax. I could See it all through the coils of the snake, and I had had enough. It might be an ancient spirit made flesh, perhaps even an elder god let back into the world from which it had been driven long ago, but it was still just a snake, and I was a Drood. Through the golden mask I could See its life force flowing through the massive coils like a river of burning light. I thrust my armoured hand deep into the unnatural snake flesh, closed my golden fist around the life force, and squeezed. The snake screamed once, and then vanished, disappearing back into the safety of the Dreamtime.
And I was left alone in the Tower with Big Aus.
He looked at the Crown Jewels, defenceless before him, and then at me. “You can’t stop me,” he said defiantly. “I’ve prepared too long for this. I have weapons and devices enough to stop even a Drood in his tracks and a teleport spell already set up to take me and the jewels right out of here.”
“You might have the weapons,” I said. “But I know the right Words.”
And I spoke aloud the Words the family Armourer had sent me, written in his own hand on a one-time-only sheet of parchment. Words that disappeared even as I memorised them, because they were too dangerous to be read by anyone who wasn’t family and protected. Old Words, powerful Words. I’d really hoped I wouldn’t have to use them, because they were a summoning to forces best left undisturbed. And the first principle of magic is, do not call up what you cannot as easily put down.
But needs must, when the Devil drives. I spoke the Words, and one by one they came; the old Kings and Queens of England. Their spirits bound by their own will to answer the call, in this place, to serve England again in her time of need. Kings from Athelstan to Canute, Henries and Richards, Queens Mary and Elizabeth and even poor Anne of the Thousand Days. They stood tall and proud in their crowns and regal robes, surrounding Big Aus. He looked from face to pititless face, mumbling his useless words of power, and then they closed in on him, and he screamed. And just like that, I was alone in the Jewel Room.
The Kings and Queens of England had returned to their rest with one new ghost condemned to defend the Towers of London for all eternity.
I went back down the curving stone stairs, back through the stone passageways and across the open courtyard, and then out through Traitor’s Gate. No one tried to stop me or ask questions. If a Drood field agent was leaving, then the trouble was over, and that was enough. Outside on the causeway, the sun was up and morning had come. It looked like being a good day, for England.
CHAPTER TWO
Summoned to Judgement, Summoned to Tourney
So; previously, in the Secret Histories . . . My family used to be ruled by a Matriarch, my grandmother Martha Drood. But I discovered that the family had become corrupt and divided under her rule and that she was party to an old and terrible secret at the heart of the Droods’ So power. So I turned against my family, brought my grandmother down, destroyed the awful Heart from which our power came, and took over running the family myself. I replaced the alien Heart with an interdimensional traveller that preferred, for inscrutable reasons of its own, to be called Ethel, and I did my best to change the way the family did things, introducing democracy for the first time.
I organised free and fair elections to decide who should run the family, and they voted overwhelmingly for Martha Drood.
I did consider killing her, blowing up the family home, scattering the Droods to the four corners of the earth, and generally acting up cranky, but basically . . . I couldn’t be arsed. They’d made their choice; let them live with it. I had overthrown the Zero Tolerance faction within the family, destroyed the evil Manifest Destiny conspiracy outside the family, and saved all of humanity from the invasion of the Hungry Gods . . . and I just didn’t have it in me to fight another war.
Besides, Martha did have the experience, and she had mellowed, and the Heart was gone, so . . . I just let her get on with it. I went back to being nothing more than a field agent again, with no more crushing duties and responsibilities and decisions—which was, after all, what I’d always wanted.
I was still part of the Matriarch’s advisory council
, to which she was, technically, obliged to explain herself and if necessary answer to. The family insisted. Thanks a whole bunch, family. And if Grandmother should go to the bad again, I could always kill her, burn the place down, scatter the family, etc.
The advisory council consisted of myself, my uncle Jack the Armourer, my cousin Harry, and William the Librarian. But not my girlfriend, the wild witch of the woods, Molly Metcalf, even though she had served with honour on the previous council, during the Hungry Gods War. In the end the Droods wouldn’t accept her in a position of authority over them, because she wasn’t family. If she were to marry me, that would be different, of course. But Molly is a free spirit and not the marrying kind. So she left the Hall and returned to her own private wood. I could have gone with her. I wanted to. But I had my duty, to my family and to the world, and through everything that’s changed I still believe in the importance and necessity of what I do.
Molly understands. She’d never been happy in the Hall anyway.
I have my own room in the Hall, with a good view, and I also happen to possess a handy little item called the Merlin Glass that allows me to jump straight to where I’m needed. It’s also a direct doorway to Molly’s wild woods. I spend as much time there as I can. Distance and family and duty are not enough to separate or divide us.
Molly and I love each other. In an ever-changing world, it’s the one certainty I can rely on.
I was always happiest working alone, as a field agent. My only responsibility to the job, and to the mission. All the time I was running the family, I couldn’t wait to put it all behind me and go back to my old job. Which only goes to show. Always be wary when the fates give you what you ask for. It means they’re setting you up for something really bad . . .
So, anyway, after the Tower of London affair, the family called me back from London. Come home, they said. You’re needed. Most urgent, most secret, get your arse back here right now. But don’t use the Merlin Glass. “Most urgent and most secret” means the fat is already in the fire and melting fast, and not using the Glass meant . . . someone was watching. I got my new car out of its garage and set course for the southwest countryside of England. It was a pleasant enough run down the motorway and then into the narrow roads and winding lanes that lead to a house you won’t find on any map. The Hall has been home to the Droods for generations, and we take our privacy very seriously. Anyone who comes looking for us won’t find us. Or if by some unfortunate chance they do, no one will ever see them again.
The Spy Who Haunted Me Page 5
