Ivy had a thought …
‘Maybe there is a way to travel out of here,’ she blurted. ‘If we can get into the Hexroom, we could use Ragwort’s door, which opens onto the featherlight mailhouse in Lundinor.’
‘Ivy, you’re right!’ Valian’s face brightened. ‘If we’re quick, we might be able to prevent Mr Punch’s arrest.’
They stopped where they were. Seb withdrew his drumsticks and moved towards the opening. Judy tried to follow, but her bad leg wouldn’t budge. ‘I’ll have to stay here,’ she said. ‘You’re on your own.’
‘Why don’t you try vanishing and then coming back?’ Seb suggested. ‘Your knee might return to normal that way.’
‘I …’ Judy hesitated. ‘I can’t.’ Very slowly, she looked over at Ivy. ‘Do you know?’
Ivy nodded. ‘Yes, I can sense it.’
‘I didn’t want to say anything,’ Judy explained. ‘It seemed too good to be true.’
‘What did?’ Seb asked. ‘What’s going on?’
Judy fixed him with a stare, her eyes glistening. ‘While we were fighting Hemlock, I got caught by the Sands of Change …’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m alive, Seb. Living, heart beating, the works.’
‘What—?’ Seb assessed Judy, from her messy braids right down to her vintage roller skates. ‘Seriously?’
Her lip wobbled; a smile spread across her entire face. ‘Seriously. I’m not a phantom any more, I’m just a girl.’
His jaw dropped. ‘That’s … brilliant!’ As he threw his arms around her, Judy blushed. Ivy noticed her patting her cheeks, sensing the blood under the surface of her skin. She guessed blushing must feel different when you’re dead.
Valian gave Judy a friendly pat on the shoulder. ‘Really glad to hear you’ve left planet zombie, but we need to hurry,’ he said, not unkindly.
Ivy stuffed her yo-yo into her pocket before handing her satchel to Judy.
‘Judy really needs a friend right now,’ she told Scratch as she stroked him goodbye. ‘You have to stay here and help her.’
‘Doings best will Scratch,’ he promised. ‘Ivy’s stay safe?’
‘I’ll do my best too.’
They traipsed through the messy remains of Midas’s room, stepping over the shattered glass and dented pieces of golden armour. Valian shoved open Hemlock’s door to the Hexroom with surprising ease, considering it had been impossible to move from the other side, and they went in. They crossed the Hexroom and stood facing Ragwort’s wooden door.
Seb laughed nervously. ‘What’s so funny?’ Ivy hissed. Her nerves were pulsing through her skin; she could have done with a joke to relax her.
He shrugged. ‘I was just thinking – if the Dirge haven’t killed us by the time this is all over … I’m actually gonna have to ask Judy out on a date. I don’t know what’s more terrifying.’
‘Lundinor will be a hostile place if Mr Punch has already been arrested,’ Valian warned, curling his fingers round the handle of Ragwort’s splintered wooden door. ‘We’ve got to be prepared for anything.’
Ivy squeezed her yo-yo. With a long creak, Ragwort’s door swung open, revealing the shadowy interior of Lundinor’s featherlight mailhouse beyond. The curved walls were made of the same grey ashlar as those in Mr Punch’s Curiosity Shop. Floor-to-ceiling shelves held jars of every imaginable kind of feather. Ivy read the labels of some of them as she ventured in: SPECIAL DELIVERY FLAMINGO and ULTRA-FAST FALCON caught her notice.
The air was cool and damp, as if it had just been raining. Valian emptied a pot of feathers labelled CHRISTMAS GREETINGS ROBIN and wedged it between Ragwort’s door and the doorframe – just in case they needed to make a speedy exit.
‘Ready?’ Seb asked, pausing by the door that opened into Lundinor.
Ivy could hear the wind whistling outside, rattling the hinges. She steadied her nerves as the door flew wide.
‘No way.’ Seb’s voice was soft.
Unable to believe what she was seeing, Ivy followed him out in a trance. What had once been a paved square bordered by cafés was now a grassy mound sloping down to the banks of a lake.
Lundinor had been flooded. Green islands poked through the murky water as far as the eye could see. Some were crowned by stone castles and connected by wooden bridges; others stood isolated in the thick mist, covered in forest. Ivy spotted the crumbling arches of a ruined abbey on one hill and a huge stone circle on another. She remembered then that a battered copy of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table had been lying open on top of the Stone of Dreams: Lundinor had transformed into a version belonging to a mythical England of old.
Other than a few boats bobbing in the reeds and a line of swallow-tailed pennants waving from distant battlements, the place was still and quiet. Over her shoulder Ivy glimpsed the featherlight mailhouse, which now formed the wobbly turret of a medieval fortress. A wooden sign erected on the drawbridge listed the names of shops and restaurants you could find inside the courtyard. The portcullis was down; there was no one around.
‘I’ve never been in Lundinor when it’s closed,’ Valian admitted. ‘I’d guess the only people here would be underguards and a handful of officials, but stay alert all the same.’
Seb examined a map on the side of the featherlight mail tower. It was constructed from odds and ends of string, rubbish, plastic bags and random objects used to represent different landmarks. ‘If I’m reading this correctly, Mr Punch’s Curiosity Shop should be’ – he moved his thumb between the strange map on the wall and the green island in the distance – ‘in that castle over there. The one with the red bunting.’
Ivy squinted through the mist. Sure enough, she spotted Mr Punch’s symbol – a black top hat – on the flags. ‘How are we going to get over there? It’s not as if we can hire a mop from a sky driver.’
‘Look, down there.’ Valian pointed to a small wooden rowing boat anchored in the weeds at the lake’s edge. They clambered down as quietly as they could and climbed in. Seb took the oars. As they moved through the water, Ivy gazed at the empty market city.
‘This place is seriously creepy,’ Seb muttered, scanning the shadows as he rowed. Only the splash of the oars broke the silence. Valian opened his leather jacket, and they saw inside the pale light of his glowing trowel, which meant, Ivy knew, that it was sensing the presence of the dead.
‘We’re not alone,’ Valian whispered. ‘There must be races of the dead lurking nearby. We need to keep our voices down. If we’re discovered, we’ll have no chance of saving Mr Punch.’
Ivy pushed her whispering senses as far as she could, using the magnifying glass to increase her reach. An overwhelming number of voices darted into her ears, making her jump. It felt as if she was standing in a huge crowd, with everyone talking through a loudspeaker. A shooting pain coursed down to her eardrum and she had to lower the magnifying glass away from her heart. ‘The dead are congregated inside the castles,’ she said, wincing. ‘I’ve never sensed so many together in one place before. They’ve got to be part of the Dirge’s army.’
‘Great.’ The oars juddered in Seb’s hands. ‘Anyone else thinking we should have stayed with Judy in Strassa?’
They moored the boat under the drawbridge of the castle where Mr Punch’s Curiosity Shop was located. Ivy attempted to sense him, but, with so many of the dead around, it was difficult to isolate one set of souls, and too painful to listen for any length of time.
‘From what we saw in the discocommunicator, that could be Mr Punch’s shop,’ Valian said, signalling to a tower at one corner of the castle. Ivy studied the squat, circular stone structure. It was the right size and shape, and the positions of the arrow slits in the walls would offer a similar view to the one she had seen in the discocommunicator hologram. Underguards in swishing black cloaks and three-cornered hats patrolled up and down the ramparts, their expressions blank.
‘They’re still under the control of the Sword of Wills,’ Seb murmured. ‘We can’t just knock and expect them to lower th
e drawbridge. How are we going to get in?’
‘Did you bring your tape measure?’ Ivy asked in a hushed voice. ‘I’ve got an idea.’
They waded as quietly as they could through the shallows of the moat, using the tall reeds and grasses for cover. Ivy checked with her whispering until they reached a part of the castle wall with no dead around; Seb climbed up on the bank, his tape measure in his hands. He frowned at Ivy, a grim expression on his face. ‘Are you sure about this?’
‘The tape measure has the power to resize things, to make them not just smaller, but bigger too,’ she said. ‘We skipped backwards to grow smaller, so, theoretically, if we skip forward …’
‘OK, OK, I get the idea.’ Seb flicked his wrists and sent the tape flying up behind him, over his head, towards his toes. On the first jump, his head bulged like a balloon being inflated. His cheeks turned chubby and his feet swelled.
On the second, his legs grew longer, as if he was wearing stilts.
‘It’s working,’ Ivy whispered to Valian. ‘He won’t be able to stay that size for long or he’ll be seen. We have to be quick.’
She and Valian crawled out of the water. Once Seb was around six metres tall, they climbed onto his sweaty hand and he lifted them up to one of the battlements. Lowering their heads below the embrasures, they scurried along to Mr Punch’s tower. The door to the shop was already wide open. Ivy couldn’t sense any dead in the immediate vicinity, so they sneaked inside. Mr Punch was nowhere to be seen, but there were no signs of a struggle. The room and all its contents appeared the same as when Ivy had seen them in the hologram of the discocommunicator.
‘Perhaps he fled before they could arrest him,’ Valian said hopefully. ‘The Stone of Dreams has gone too.’
They heard some shuffling outside and hurried to one of the arrow slits. A small group of underguards was assembled down in the courtyard, just in front of the gatehouse. Two of them were guarding the Stone of Dreams, while another three detained Mr Punch. Ivy could see him flicking between several characters, faster and more out of control than ever. She tried to catch what his different guises were saying to each other, but they were changing too fast.
‘Is that who I think it is?’ Valian said, squinting.
‘The souls within Mr Punch are panicked,’ she told him. ‘It’s as if none of them wants to relinquish control, rendering all of them powerless.’
Valian rubbed his chin. ‘The underguards can’t realize he’s Mr Punch, or else there would be more of them here to apprehend him. No one else knows he’s a Hob, do they?’
Ivy shook her head; as far as she knew, it was a secret.
‘Look over there …’ Valian nodded to one of the underguards who appeared stiffer and more robotic than the others. He seemed to be issuing commands and telling the others what to do. ‘I can’t see any members of the Dirge anywhere, so where is that one getting his orders from?’
The underguard leader pointed at the Stone of Dreams and barked an instruction. Two of his men removed the copy of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table from the lectern and put in its place a smaller book with a black leather cover, which they opened at the middle.
The ground rumbled. Up in the room in the tower, Ivy steadied herself against the stone wall. ‘What’s happening?’ The arrow-slit windows were expanding and filling with stained glass. Fiery torches materialized on the walls, flooding the room with flickering orange light.
‘They’re changing the appearance of Lundinor,’ Valian realized.
He led Ivy back outside, onto the battlements. Lundinor was cloaked in darkness. The castle walls had grown higher and a spiky black roof now covered the courtyard, obscuring Mr Punch and the underguards. The jolly flags had transformed into tattered rags, and grotesque gargoyles loomed from the battlements.
Gazing into the distance, Ivy saw that Lundinor had turned into a decrepit medieval city. A black-as-night river ran through the centre, crossed by arched bridges lined with nightmarish statues of winged creatures. The pointed spires of several Gothic cathedrals poked above the gloomy thatched houses on both banks. The stink of tar and sewage carried on the wind.
At the sound of footsteps, Ivy turned. Four underguards were marching towards her and Valian, their faces immobile. One of them was holding Seb – back to normal size now – in an armlock. ‘Argh!’ he yelped, gritting his teeth.
Ivy ran to help him but the underguard leader strode out from behind them, stopping her in her tracks. The veins on his temple were purple and throbbing, as if he was straining with all his might against the Sword of Wills. When he opened his mouth, a familiar deep voice spilled out.
‘You couldn’t resist joining me, I see.’
Cold fingers traced the back of Ivy’s neck. Octavius Wrench …? He must be using the Sword of Wills to control the underguard’s vocal cords.
‘Welcome to my glorious New Dawn,’ he continued. ‘You lucky three will have front-row seats right here to watch Lundinor’s resurrection using the Sword of Wills.’ He signalled to the other officers. ‘See that they are made comfortable.’
Two underguards strode towards Ivy and Valian. Ivy considered trying to resist, but she was worried that she’d endanger Seb’s life if she did. Her heart sank as uncommon paperclips were fastened around her wrists and ankles. The officer patted the pockets of her jeans and removed her magnifying glass and yo-yo before pushing her to the floor. Seb and Valian were secured in exactly the same manner and forced to their knees beside her.
One of the officers snapped Seb’s drumsticks in half, making him cry out. Another untied Valian’s boat shoes, removed everything from his pockets – he was carrying a considerable number of uncommon objects – and threw them, along with Ivy’s yo-yo and magnifying glass, over the castle wall. Ivy heard a distant splash as they landed far below in the moat. With a loud scrape, three heavy iron fetters rose from the stone floor and were fixed to their ankle bindings.
The underguard leader lowered himself to Ivy’s level, so that his bloodshot eyes were at the same height as hers. ‘The sun is rising. In an hour’s time its light will cover this castle and I will meet you all again, face to face.’ He grinned malevolently. ‘Until then, enjoy the show.’
The troop marched away, into the castle. A door slammed shut; the sound of their footsteps faded.
‘What does he mean, “its light will cover this castle”?’ Valian asked. ‘We’re miles underground. How can he get the sun to shine down here?’
Ivy remembered Mr Punch’s fragmented warning: … Great Gates … Blackheath … using the sword …
‘Blackheath is above us,’ she murmured. ‘That’s how Octavius Wrench is planning to get natural light in here: the Sword of Wills can control the laws of physics. He’s going to lift Lundinor to the surface!’
Seb’s face went white as a sheet. ‘He can’t possibly … Lundinor is gigantic. It would cause a massive earthquake; millions of people would die.’
‘Billions of people,’ Valian corrected, ‘if he repeats the process in other undermarts around the world … Think of the Dirge’s map.’
Ivy’s ears were suddenly bombarded by angry voices. She wriggled to her knees so she could see over the parapet walls. Selkies were slithering out of the river, over the banks and onto the Gauntlet, the main road heading towards the Great Gates. The hulking shapes of all kinds of dead races floated out under the portcullis of every castle and added themselves to the procession.
‘The army of the dead,’ she said with a shiver. ‘They’re moving.’
Seb scratched at the paperclip around his ankles. His wrists were joined so tightly that he could only move his fingers a tiny bit apart. ‘How are we going to escape? These things are unbreakable.’
‘I freed Rosie with my uncommon boat shoes, but they’ll be lying at the bottom of the moat by now,’ Valian said, tugging his bound feet away from the fetter embedded in the floor.
Ivy reached out with her whispering. Now that the dead were advancing
towards the Great Gates, the castle was emptying of voices. She narrowed her field of sense to the curtain wall, concentrating carefully. ‘I think I can locate Mr Punch. He’s on the ground floor in a room with what feels like the Stone of Dreams.’
‘Can you ask the Stone to help us, like you did with the ship’s wheel?’ Valian asked.
Ivy got a sinking feeling, thinking of her failed attempt to communicate with the Sword of Wills. ‘I’ll give it a go,’ she said bravely. She scrunched her nose up in concentration and searched for the broken soul inside the Stone of Dreams. Its solemn voice became clear for a few seconds before it was muffled again. She refocused over and over, but on each occasion she was only able to lock onto it for a brief moment. ‘It’s no use,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’m not skilled enough.’
‘You have to try once more,’ Valian urged her firmly. ‘You couldn’t detect Mr Rife’s pram when we were outside Forward and Rife’s auction house yesterday. Now you can sense a room in the centre of this castle. Your abilities have got stronger, Ivy, even in that short space of time. You can do it.’
Valian was right. Even without the magnifying glass, she could perceive souls further away than ever before. She took a deep breath and homed in on the Stone of Dreams again. This time she told herself to be undaunted.
‘Questi sono tempi oscuri per Lundinor,’ the Stone uttered.
‘I can hear it!’ Ivy beamed at Seb and Valian. ‘It’s talking in a different language. Italian, I think.’
‘Why can’t it speak English?’ Seb groaned. ‘I don’t know any Italian.’
‘Me neither,’ Valian added regretfully. ‘You’ll have to make it understand you some other way.’
Ivy considered the problem carefully. Mr Punch had once told her that the Stone of Dreams was fond of books, which accounted for its extraordinary powers. Maybe her own love of reading would help her connect with it better.
The Frozen Telescope Page 17
