He lifted his chin and said in a clear voice, “We’re trying to rescue my teacher and leave so there will be no more trouble.”
“And I am trying to rescue my teacher!” shouted Marin, his amber eyes bulging.
“What? Where is he?” Blaise asked, but the apprentice cut him off, holding up a shaking finger to silence him.
“I will tell you NOTHING!” he said. “You are like Pandora, opening the box and letting evil out! Why? Why could you not leave us alone?”
The ninja threw his mask across the Mariner’s Chamber.
“Calm down,” Mandy said, regarding Dean’s bare face with a look of disgust. “I still can’t believe I let you dance with me!”
“You’ll get over it,” said Dean.
“Maybe. Now start talking,” she said, adjusting Lexie’s position in her arms.
“I’ll tell you everything, but first let’s get this guy off the floor,” said Dean. “That’s his cat, by the way.”
Mandy seemed unperturbed by the phantoms swirling about and stroked Lexie’s head as she tried to put her on the ground. “He’s not taking very good care of her. She’s scared out of her wits. Look, the poor thing’s still clinging to me.”
“Aren’t you scared?” Dean tried to prop Munro up, but the man kept falling back like a sack of potatoes, so he took him by one shoulder and gestured for Mandy to do the same on the other side.
“Not really. These spirits are too busy with each other to bother with me,” she said, matter of fact, and picked up the shredded Ouija board from the floor.
“Spirits, it’s time to go now,” Munro repeated under his breath. “You really must go back to the other side immediately.”
“Fat chance of that,” said Mandy, grabbing him under the other armpit and pulling him towards the bench. “You called them out on Halloween night and there are too many to handle. They’re a right rough crew as well and I reckon you’re a bit over-sensitive.”
“Can’t you say something to them?” asked Dean, shuddering as the invisible apparitions tangled with each other.
“And end up like this guy? Best thing is to ignore them and concentrate on Sunni.”
“And Blaise,” he said, shoving the house keys, wallets, sketchbook and phones further down the bench so they could lay Munro out.
“Blaise is in there too?”
“That’s Sunni’s wallet and phone, and those keys, so the other stuff is probably his,” he said, opening the sketchbook. “Yeah, his name’s in here.”
With a huge effort, the pair hoisted Munro up and got him settled.
Mandy picked Lexie back up and cuddled her. “And you’ve been spying on them because? Give it to me in a nutshell please.”
“I was bored.” Dean shrugged and screwed up his mouth.
“You bored? With all those games you play constantly?” she snorted.
“I knew Sunni was up to something. She’s been sneaking around with Blaise behind my mum’s back. I thought I’d follow them and see what they got up to. But last night something happened and Sunni got all secretive. Even more than usual.”
“Ouija board,” said Mandy knowingly, ducking one of the spirits who came too close. “That’s how we met Lady Ishbel.”
Dean nodded. “And I heard my mum talking to yours on the phone this morning about what happened. The next thing I knew, Sunni was off to Blackhope Tower this afternoon. So I followed her.”
“And she was in here with Blaise,” Mandy suggested.
“Yeah. I sneaked up here earlier looking for them. But this guy caught me at the door,” he said, jerking his thumb at Munro. “Then I tried again and heard him telling Sunni and Blaise about this Oculus thing and it sounded fishy. So I sneaked back again tonight.”
“Is it supposed to be projecting right on top of that painting?” Mandy moved closer to the Oculus and squinted at the light beaming across the chamber. “The picture’s all messed up.”
She jumped away from the magic lantern when one of the phantoms lowered its weapon and flew towards the projection, hovering around its perimeter. Two others joined him and then the rest, all nosing around the sides of the painting like sharks circling. And then one by one, they vanished into the Oculus’s light.
Chapter 20
All through Marin’s tirade Sunni had stood silently, her mouth hanging open. He was angry at what was happening and she didn’t blame him, but she thought they’d become friends and allies in Arcadia.
He turned to her with a frown. “You like your portrait, Sunniva? If I had drawn a dog would you have come?”
Sunni wanted to pitch the portrait sketch right into the sea. When she thought of all the times when they were together inside The Mariner’s Return and she had wished he’d say her name just once. Now she wished he hadn’t.
“The drawing could have been of anything. It had your signature on it, Marin,” she said carefully. “That was all I needed as proof that it was sent by a friend.”
“I see. And now you are here, as a friend, you will undo the harm you have caused.”
“I want that more than anything. But how?”
“Go back to your world and extinguish the Oculus’s flame,” Marin said.
“We can’t leave our teacher here.” Blaise crossed his arms over his chest. “Soranzo has him.”
Marin gritted his teeth in a disbelieving smile. “Can’t?
“Blaise is right,” said Sunni. “When we have Mr Bell, we’ll leave immediately. And we don’t have much time!”
Before Marin could direct any more rage at them, a call came from somewhere in the mist. The voice was a young man’s. Another younger voice answered and repeated the call.
Marin stopped and listened. His angry face went slack with dismay. He called back in Italian and climbed back into the rigging without explanation.
Sunni dropped the sketch and ran to Blaise’s side. She held his elbow tight and said, “What Munro did isn’t our fault.”
“No,” he replied. “But we played around with the Oculus and started all this.”
“We weren’t to know what would happen,” she said.
“I think we had a pretty good idea since Corvo’s magic is involved!” he said sharply, then mumbled, “Sorry.”
But she was looking past him at something.
The mist had thinned slightly in the centre of the circle. Something monumentally tall and black spiked out of the sea like a skeleton’s bony finger. Sunni tried to make it out against the indigo of the sky but the mist closed back over it.
“What was that?” she whispered.
“Huh?”
“There was something out there. It’s gone now.”
“Look, Sunni, I get that Marin’s protective,” Blaise said. “He’s always been Corvo’s attack dog. Nothing’s changed except we’re on his enemy list again.”
“Unless we find a way to get Mr B and get out.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Like we can do that from here.”
“Hey! Do you want me to start pointing fingers at the person who wanted to follow the raven? Because it wasn’t me.”
“No, not until Marin drew your picture.”
“Look what he’s done within two minutes of us being here. He’s got us fighting.” She turned away and started walking. “Maybe you should take your dad’s advice. Climb your imaginary hill and look at your problems a different way.”
“Sunni…” he began in a pleading way.
But she shook her head and said, “I need a minute alone, all right?”
Sunni walked through the mid-section of the ship, trying to calm down. As she explored, she recognised a few characters from the top layer of The Mariner’s Return. Unlike those in the living under-layers of Arcadia, these painted people were frozen and unmoving. They stood by their bread and vegetable stalls, and the sight of the painted food made Sunni wish she’d eaten something before she’d come out. They were probably starting the buffet at the party by now. She forced herself to move her thoughts elsewhe
re. Maybe Blaise’s dad was right and she should find a high place to look down on her problems too.
A wall and two-storey staircase from The Mariner’s Return had bled through and now grew out from the mainmast. The staircase was narrow and had no railing but it was they highest thing she could climb. Fed up with tripping over her long gown, she sat on the bottom step and ripped it upwards from the hem to the knee. With a hard tug, she ripped the cloth horizontally and it came away in a long strip. She wound this round her hair to keep it back and resolutely climbed the stairs.
When Sunni reached the top she clung to a crooked window in the wall and looked out. The perch was dizzyingly high. The mist dissipated here and, though she could barely see the other ships they were tethered to, she had a clear view of Amsterdam. The skyline had changed radically since they arrived. From a flat, silent city under a full moon, it had transformed into a place with hills and woods, hedges and islands, under rising and setting suns.
The quay was empty. The other two ships were now gone too. And there was no sign of Soranzo and his sailors.
Sunni hung over the window frame, trying to think of a way out of this predicament. She was aware of grunting and muttering sounds coming from the misty air nearby. A shape was in the next ship’s rigging, very high. The figure was spread-eagled like a star and she knew in an instant that it was Marin. Every few moments he would bring one arm down as if he was throwing a stone at the ground and exclaim something in a language she could not understand. And then he’d go still.
Suddenly Marin peered intently at the water below and shook his head in disbelief.
Sunni followed the direction of his gaze at the open water beyond the mist. When she saw what floated into view, she covered her mouth in worried surprise. One of the ships that had left after theirs was slowly sailing past and it was full of sailors with lanterns.
Soranzo stood in a circle of them, leaning lazily against a long pike with something stuck on its tip.
Sunni’s heart sank.
From his high perch Marin threw his arm down even more sharply, and as he did so, he conjured up a wave that pushed Soranzo’s ship back for just a moment. Their enemy only laughed and called out something scornful in Italian that echoed across the water.
When his ship had drawn very close, Soranzo held his pike up as if to show Marin what was on it. When Sunni realised that the limp black thing stuck to its point was a raven, she had to swallow hard and look away. Was this the same messenger bird that had guided them and set loose their ship?
A hoarse psst came from the bottom of the stairs. Blaise climbed up after her, his eyes earnest with apology and curiosity. When he got to the top, she shushed him before he could say anything and pointed at Soranzo and at Marin hanging in the rigging.
Angus lurked behind Soranzo, looking restless. He muttered something and his new ally shrugged.
“I call out to Fausto Corvo!” Soranzo bellowed. “I call him by the spirits of all the men who died trying to find him. I will have vengeance in their names! And I must at last know the true location of the three enchanted paintings.”
“I can tell you that if you’ll listen.” Angus pointed in the direction of the ring of ships. “Corvo has them in his workshop in the stone sea stack behind that fog. I’ve seen them with my own eyes!”
Sunni glanced behind her. Was that what she had glimpsed a few moments before? There was no sign now of the sheer-sided needle of rock sticking out of the sea, as it had in Arcadia.
Soranzo gave Angus a dismissive look. “One of Corvo’s tricks to put hunters off the scent. And you believed it.”
There was a disturbance on Soranzo’s ship as the air churned above the crew’s heads. Even he looked alarmed as, one by one, the seven spirits from the Mariner’s Chamber assembled on deck around him, visible to everyone.
“Who – or what – are they?” Blaise whispered, aghast.
“I don’t know!” Sunni chewed her thumb anxiously and scanned the deck.
Soranzo gazed at the ghostly newcomers in astonishment. Whether or not he recognised their corrupted faces, Sunni couldn’t tell, but he acknowledged them with a bow.
She saw by Marin’s rigid outline that this development stunned him. He sat motionless and seemed unable to come up with any other magic to hold back his master’s enemy.
Soranzo rolled his head from side to side, a strange jubilation in his face. “My band of followers is growing!”
“This is all we need,” said Blaise. “Do you see Mr B anywhere on their ship?”
“No,” said Sunni. “And now we’ve got to get past those things to find him.”
Soranzo seemed to have grown taller and more robust since the spirits arrived.
“Fausto Corvo,” he called, sounding relaxed and confident. “I see only your minions in the rigging but I know you can hear me. No doubt you are hiding in your lair, desperately trying to correct all that has gone wrong with your sorcery!”
He turned to his sailors and commanded them to laugh. They fell about, but none more than Angus whose grin shone from his darkly tanned and rough-bearded face.
“You never thought about what could happen if someone was intelligent enough to steal the Oculus and point its light at your painting,” Soranzo went on. “My spies learned of an object on its way to Prague. That was nothing unusual, but it was to be delivered to Emperor Rudolf himself, and you were the man who sent it. I decided to have my lieutenants intercept the object on its journey. Imagine my delight when I obtained your Oculus shadow lantern and the glass pictures!”
Sunni noticed that Angus tensed at this news and watched Soranzo intently.
“It took me some time to work out that I could enter each shadowland and how to return. You must have sent directions to the Emperor separately, so he would know exactly what to do with the lantern, but as he never received the Oculus, they were useless.” Soranzo was enjoying his monologue, no doubt hoping that Corvo was squirming somewhere as he listened. “You wanted to tell him your pathetic story about running from Venice and Prague, making me out to be a monster! I have never understood why you wanted Emperor Rudolf to have your paintings. He already had castles full of paintings and jewels and treasures. Why should he have everything?” He clenched his fist and shook it at the air. “And in the end you had no time to see the Emperor. Poor Corvo!”
He began to seethe and sway. “In these projections your doubles waited fruitlessly for Emperor Rudolf to use the Oculus and come inside so they could tease him about where your three paintings are hidden. Because you knew he enjoyed curiosities, you also embedded clues in the shadowlands. I have seen the coded names on ships and signs. Your doubles had a cipher disc for Rudolf to help him break the code!”
Blaise murmured, “Cipher disc?”
“The last clone said something about a cipher,” whispered Sunni.
Soranzo chucked the pike with the raven’s body on it at Angus, who just managed to grab it. Soranzo took something small and rectangular out of his doublet and waved it with his free hand. “Answer me another question, Corvo, when you have enough courage to show yourself! This is the fourth glass picture. And I have been in its shadowland.”
Sunni heard Blaise let out a ‘whoa’ under his breath and she was just as surprised.
“In the fourth shadowland, Corvo, you sailed from Amsterdam to London,” the man shouted. “The long satchels containing your paintings were not with you on that ship. What did you do with them? Where are they?”
“What just happened?” Dean stared at the beam of light where the seven spirits had vanished. “It’s gone quiet all of a sudden.”
“You’ve got me there,” said Mandy, rubbing the scratches on her arm. “It’s a lot calmer without them though.” She looked down at Lexie, who was contentedly nuzzling her neck. Her owner, Munro, was half unconscious on the bench, still occasionally mumbling orders for the phantoms to leave.
Mandy smiled and called out in a sweet voice, “Lady Ishbel, are you here?
You can come out.” The air whooshed around them and Lexie followed it with her green-golden eyes, unperturbed now. “Oh! You certainly are here. Can you tell me what just happened?” Her face went serious as she listened. “My goodness! The painting has opened up and the other spirits have gone inside to find Fausto Corvo?” She raised her eyebrows at Dean, whose jaw dropped. “And you’re going in to fight against them with who? Mar-Mar-Marin…”
Dean scowled in disbelief at this unwelcome name.
“Okay,” said Mandy. “If you see our friends in there, Sunni and Blaise, please help them too?” A sharp gust of wind snarled around her and she jumped.
As the whirlwind met the beam of the Oculus, a slender young woman with long wild hair materialised in front of them. She turned, in her puffed-out dress, to give them a fiery look and marched into the light.
Chapter 21
At Soranzo’s speech, the seven spectres quivered and raised their weapons, which prompted the sailors to do the same. Their leader stamped about holding the fourth glass slide up in both hands like a hard-won prize. His band of followers went wild.
Blaise watched them with a stone-hard dread in the pit of his stomach. He touched the round metal object in his pocket to make sure it was still safe. Was it the cipher disc Soranzo mentioned?
The spectres danced in the air like flying devils and the sailors whooped among them. But Blaise’s eyes were glued to Angus. He was making a good show of support, applauding Soranzo, but his hairy face was sombre.
“Angus doesn’t look happy,” he whispered to Sunni.
“Who cares?” she hissed. “He’s Soranzo’s problem now.”
Yeah, Blaise thought, unless we cross paths with him again.
Soranzo put the fourth Oculus slide back in his doublet and barked an order. His ship vanished in the mist.
Marin sprang to life, throwing down spells one after another. The mist suddenly broke up and blew out to sea, revealing Corvo’s younger apprentices Dolphin and Zorzi on two other ships, sweeping their arms in the same way as Marin. Blaise could now see the entire ring of twelve brightly coloured ships magically tethered together from bow to stern. In the centre of the floating circle was the sea stack, a pointed black rock in the dark.
The Shadow Lantern Page 16
