"I thought you were dead!" Alexandra said loudly. "Damn you, why aren’t you dead?"
The Armourer sniffed loudly. "I was a field agent for twenty years, remember? I don’t die that easily, girl."
"We have other weapons," said Matthew too loudly. "There’s a whole army on its way here, armed to the teeth!"
"See this breastplate?" said the Armourer. "This is the Juggernaut Jumpsuit. Yes, that one, from the Codex. Bring on your weapons and your army. It won’t do you any good. Eddie, you go on, boy. You’ve got work to do."
"Listen," said Alexandra. "Hear those running feet? That’s our reinforcements. Dozens of them. You can’t stop us all, old man."
And that was when the ghost of old Jacob Drood appeared. Out of his chapel at last, for the first time he looked truly frightening. We all shrank back from him as he manifested on the air before us in a rush of air cold as death itself. He didn’t look like a grumpy old ancestor anymore; he looked like what he was: a dead man hanging on to existence through a terrible act of will. A stark, spectral figure, more a presence than a person, his face was all hollows and shadows, his eyes burning with unearthly fires. Just looking at him froze the blood in my veins and closed a cold hand around my heart. We were in the presence of death now, stark and awful and utterly unrelenting.
Time for me to take a hand, said the ghost of old Jacob, in a harsh and terrible voice that resonated inside my head. This is what I’ve been waiting for all these years. Even though I often forgot for years at a time, still I hung on, just for this. Bring on your army, Matthew and Alexandra, and I will show them all the awful things I’ve learned to do since I died. He looked at me, and I flinched away despite myself. Go to the Heart, Eddie. That’s where all the answers are. And do…what you have to do.
Jacob and the Armourer headed towards Matthew and Alexandra, and they backed quickly away, leaving open the way to the Sanctity’s door. Molly and I hurried forward. A door to our right burst open, and a whole crowd of armoured Droods rushed in. They saw the Armourer and the terrible ghost of old Jacob, and they stumbled to a halt. Molly and I opened the door to the Sanctity and ran through, pulling the door shut behind us.
And as the door closed, the screaming began.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Heart Breaker
Standing there in the Sanctity, with the door slamming shut behind me, I felt like a vandal breaking into a cathedral. The Heart blazed before me, shining like the sun, so bright I had to force myself to look at it. A single massive, magnificent diamond, so big it filled most of the huge chamber my family had built to contain and protect it all those centuries ago. Just standing in the presence of the Heart took my breath away, made me feel small and insignificant in its presence. But I didn’t believe that anymore. I knew better now. I glared into the light, refusing to look away or bow my head, even as the simmering light seemed to blaze right through me, seeing everything in my mind and in my soul.
The feeling of awe snapped off just like that. The light was just as bright, the Heart was just as huge, but its presence wasn’t overpowering anymore. It was just a really big diamond. I heard Molly make a soft, relaxed sound at my side as she felt the sudden change too, and I started guiltily as I realised I’d forgotten she was even there. The Heart’s presence could do that to you. Molly and I advanced slowly on the Heart until we were almost close enough to touch it. The curving side of the diamond rose up before us like a multifaceted cliff face, but there was no trace of our reflections. The light blazing from inside the Heart overpowered everything else. I could feel the light on my skin, crawling slightly, like I had dived into an icy cold pond. And for the first time I got the impression that the Heart knew I was there, knew why I had come, and that it was looking directly at me.
"Hello, Eddie," said the Heart. Its voice was warm and friendly, male and female, and it seemed to come from everywhere at once. "Normally I take great pains to maintain a suitably spiritual and refined atmosphere in here, manipulating the emotions of all who come before me, so as to keep everyone in a properly respectful attitude. But there’s no point with you, is there? You know my little secret, and you came here for the truth. Poor boy. As if your little mind could contain or appreciate all my truths."
"You can talk?" I said. A bit obvious, I know, but I was honestly shocked. The Heart had never spoken to any Drood that I knew of, not since it made the original bargain with my Druid ancestors.
"Are you really so surprised to find that I’m a living, thinking thing?" said the Heart. "Not all intelligence is based in meat."
"Did you really come here from another dimension?" said Molly, just to make it clear she wasn’t being left out of anything.
"From a higher dimension," said the Heart. "What can I say; I always did have a thing for slumming."
"Why have you never spoken before?" I said.
"I have," said the Heart. "But only to the ruling Matriarch of your tribe. By long tradition, each Matriarch has to agree to continue our long-standing bargain. Bind her family to me, body and soul. And in return, I grant you all just a little of my power. I speak to you only now, Eddie, because you carry Oath Breaker. Nasty little thing. I’ve been trying to persuade your family to get rid of it for generations."
"Because it could destroy you," said Molly.
"Of course," said the Heart.
"Why did you come here?" I said harshly. I was so close to answers now, I could barely stand it. I wanted to know everything. I’d come so far, lost so much, and I could feel Death herself tapping on my shoulder as the strange matter moved through me…but whatever happened here, I was to determined to know the truth at last. "You were on the run, weren’t you? Being chased across the dimensions by something that scared you. So what did you do, that you had to download yourself into this small, primitive dimension?"
"I was just having a little fun," said the Heart. Its voice had changed subtly. It still sounded warm and friendly and ingratiating, but underneath it sounded like it enjoyed pulling the wings off flies, or stamping on butterflies, just because it could. "I like to play. And if sometimes I play a little too roughly and break my toys, well…there are always more toys."
"Toys?" I said. "Is that all we are to you?"
"What else could you be? Such limited, short-lived things; you flicker in and out so fast I can hardly keep track of you. I have lived for millennia!"
"And you can’t think of anything better to do than play with toys?" said Molly.
"To be loved and worshipped and obeyed without question," said the Heart happily. "What could be more important than that?"
"And if your toys ever dare to rebel?" I said.
"Then I crush them," said the Heart. "Toys must know their place. That’s why I allowed you in here, Eddie. I made you what you are. I gave you the gift of my golden collar, and you wore it for years like the good little doggie you are. But it’s still my collar."
The torc around my neck burned icy cold as the golden living metal swept over and around me in a moment, even though I hadn’t called it. The armour enclosed me like a prison cell, insulating me from the world and holding me helpless within. I said the activating Words again and again, but nothing happened. I strained my arms and legs against the encasing metal, but the armour held me still. I wasn’t in control anymore. The Heart was. I was just a gleaming golden puppet now, with a man trapped inside it.
"Kill the woman," the Heart said happily, greedily, and the armour moved to obey, advancing on Molly despite everything I could do to stop it.
Molly called out to me as the armour closed in on her, but she couldn’t hear my answer. And since the Heart took up most of the space in the Sanctity, there wasn’t really anywhere for her to go. She backed away around the perimeter of the great chamber, trying to keep a safe distance between her and the advancing armour. There were two exits out of the Sanctity, but she had to know the armour would be upon her before she could even open a door. I was screaming the activating Words now, and screaming at
Molly to get away, but none of it got past the featureless golden mask that covered my face.
Molly realised she couldn’t reach me and stood her ground. Her face became calm and coldly resolved. She conjured up a roaring storm wind that came howling in out of nowhere, sweeping the air before it like a battering ram. It tried to pick me up and blow me away, but my armour grew heavy spikes out of the bottom of its golden feet and anchored itself to the wooden floor. The wind battered harmlessly against my golden exterior, failed to find any purchase, and dropped away to nothing. The armour took a step forward.
Molly conjured up handfuls of hellfire and threw them at me. Flames from the deepest part of the Pit, designed to sear both body and soul, and still they couldn’t touch me through the golden armour. The flames scoured and blackened the floor around me, and the air shimmered in a vicious heat haze, but I felt nothing. The armour took a step forward.
Monsters appeared out of nowhere to block my path. Huge, awful creatures, with armoured hides and lashing barbed tentacles and wide snapping mouths full of razor teeth. But the armour walked right through the illusions to get to Molly. She backed away, dismissing the illusions with a wave of her hand, and conjured up a bottomless pit between her and me. The effort brought beads of sweat to her face. The armour leaped easily over the gap to stand before her, propelled by the unnatural strength of its armoured legs. Molly called up a shimmering screen of pure magic to stand between her and me. It snapped and crackled on the air, supported by her iron will. The armour placed a single golden hand against the screen and pushed slowly, remorselessly, with all the armour’s boundless strength behind it.
Until the screen shattered and broke and disappeared, and Molly fell back, crying out in shock and pain. Because in the end Molly was human, and the armour wasn’t.
Molly was clearly exhausted now, all her inner resources drained. She stumbled backwards, away from me, clinging to the wall for support, and the armour went after her. Its deadly golden hands stretched out towards her, and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do to stop it.
"Eddie," said Molly, in a voice trying hard to be calm and steady, "I hope you can hear me in there. I know this…isn’t you. I’ve done all I can. It’s up to you to stop the armour now. But if you can’t…I want you to know I understand. I understand it won’t be you, doing it. So don’t blame yourself. Just…find a way to make the Heart pay. Good-bye, Eddie. My one true love."
I couldn’t even answer her.
I’d exhausted all my strength, fighting helplessly inside the armour. Setting my human strength against its inhuman power. I couldn’t move any part of me except as the armour moved me. It was like having my hand disobey me, pick up a weapon, and commit murder, while I could only watch and scream helplessly at it to stop. It didn’t help that so much stress had weakened my defences, and the strange matter had flooded into all of my body now. I could feel it pulsing within me. The pain was sickening, and I was so weak I would probably have fallen if the armour hadn’t been holding me up. I was so tired. I’d fought for so long, refusing to give in, and all for nothing.
And then a little voice at the back of my head said, Then stop fighting, you idiot. The voice didn’t sound anything like mine. It didn’t sound like the Heart’s, either. So I took a gamble and stopped fighting.
I let the weakness flood through me, taking all the strength from my arms and legs. I stopped resisting and let the strange matter do what it would. I gave up…and the armour lurched to a sudden halt. Its golden hands stopped a few inches short of Molly’s throat, and then slowly and ponderously the armour sank to its knees before her. Because the torc was linked to me, body and soul, and even the Heart couldn’t break that link. The armour is only ever as strong as the man within, and this man…had nothing left. The golden living metal rippled over my skin, struggling to obey the Heart’s orders, but it was overridden by my stubborn weakness, backed by the strange matter’s presence in my body. A small amount of control came back to me, and I slowly forced the golden metal away from my face so Molly could see and hear me. She crouched down before me, and I think she could see death in my face. She started to cry.
"Sorry, Molly," I said. "But this is as far as I go. We always knew I probably wouldn’t get to see the end of the story…The strange matter’s all through me now. Only one thing left you can do for me now. Quickly, before the Heart finds a way to force control of the armour away from me, take Torc Cutter and cut the torc around my neck. That destroys the armour. It won’t be able to hurt you. Then take Oath Breaker and smash that smug talking diamond into a million pieces."
"I can’t do that, Eddie! It’ll kill you!"
"I’m dying anyway! Do it, Molly. Please. Protect yourself. At least this way…my death will have some meaning. Some purpose."
"Eddie…"
"If you love me, kill me. Because I’d rather die than see you hurt."
"I wish things could have been different."
"Me too. Good-bye, Molly. My one true love."
I lowered my golden head, showing her my neck. Already my movements were getting stiff as the Heart fought to regain control. Molly produced the ugly black shears and set them against the side of my golden neck. Somewhere in the background, the Heart was shouting orders, but neither of us was listening. Molly forced the shears together, and the black blades cut through my torc. My golden armour disappeared in a moment, and the two halves of my golden collar fell to the floor.
And I laughed out loud as new strength flooded through me.
I rose to my feet, still laughing, and lifted Molly up with me as she stared blankly into my face. She started to laugh herself from sheer relief. I took her in my arms and held her close, and she held me, and I felt strong and well and at peace at last. Molly and I clung on to each other for what seemed like forever, and it felt good, so good to be alive. Finally we let go and stood back and looked into each other’s faces.
"Eddie, you’re alive…"
"I know! Isn’t it great?"
"How…Eddie, there’s a collar around your throat. And it’s silver."
"I know," I said. "It’s the strange matter. Apparently there’s been something of a misunderstanding…"
"To put it mildly," said a new voice. "I was beginning to think I’d never get through to you in time."
The new voice was large and powerful and very sane, and it thundered through the Sanctity. It emanated from me, but it wasn’t me speaking. The Heart cried out in rage and despair, but it sounded like a very small thing compared to the new voice. The strange matter, speaking through me.
"Time for the truth at last," it said. "Know now the true history of that foul and evil creature you know as the Heart. Criminal. Sinner. Thief. Coward. Murderer. It came here because it was running scared. Because it knew I was close behind it, coming to capture it and take it back to where it came from, for judgement and punishment. For all the awful things it has done in so many dimensions. The Heart has been on the run for millennia, passing through dimension after dimension and preying on whatever it found there.
"I am the shaman of my tribe, much like your Druid ancestors. We protect the innocent and punish the guilty, and we never give up.
"I’d almost lost track of the Heart. The trail had gone cold, and I had searched so many places. And then a small opening appeared between the dimensions. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before: vague and unfocused, quite primitive really. It was the Blue Fairy using his gift at random to go fishing and see what he might find. Intrigued, I allowed him to catch just a small piece of myself and take it through into his primitive backwater dimension. And there was the Heart! Hidden away, in the back of beyond where no one would think to look. I could sense its presence, but its exact location was hidden from me. So I manipulated the Blue Fairy into passing the small piece of me onto the most powerful group in this dimension, the Drood family. And sure enough, once I was brought here, I was able to locate the Heart. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough of me to break throu
gh the defences your family had put in place around the Heart.
"So I waited. And soon enough the Blue Fairy went fishing again, and I allowed him to catch more of me. And then I manipulated him, and the Drood traitors, and finally the elf lord, all so that he would fire an arrow of me into you, Eddie. So that you could bring me here, into the presence of the Heart. Inside all its protections. I never meant to cause you such pain, Eddie. All the suffering and weakness were caused by my strange matter clashing with the Heart’s collar. What you might call a short circuit. The human body was never meant to contain such diametrically opposed other-dimensional materials."
"Why didn’t I die when Molly cut the torc from me?" I said.
"Droods only die when separated from their torcs because that’s what the Heart wanted," said the voice. "It couldn’t risk any of its toys getting loose. But that’s all over now. The Heart can’t hurt you anymore, Eddie. Not while I’m here to protect you. And it won’t be able to hurt your family anymore, once it’s been destroyed. And though I’ve chased the Heart for so very long…I think it’s your privilege to put an end to the Heart, Eddie. If you want it."
"I want it," I said, and I drew Oath Breaker from my belt and turned to face the Heart.
"You can’t do this!" it screamed. "I made you what you are! I made your family powerful! I put you in charge of this stupid little world! You don’t dare hurt me! I’m your god!"
"Bad god," I said.
I raised Oath Breaker over my head and brought it smashing down on the huge diamond. The ancient weapon took on its simple brutal aspect and undid all the forces that bound the other-dimensional being together. The Heart screamed shrilly, its light flaring in great staccato pulses, and then the massive diamond exploded soundlessly. It shattered into millions of lifeless fragments, falling to the floor like sand until nothing was left of the Heart. There hadn’t been much to it, after all. The Heart was hollow all along.
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