‘I checked upstairs: the top floor of the bus is empty,’ he added. ‘But I’ve got no reception on my phone. What’s going on?’
The ground was still trembling – an aftershock maybe. Peering across the heath, the old lady noticed the crumbling outline of a tall structure that hadn’t been there before: a gated archway with strangely shaped posts on either side. She rubbed her forehead, guessing she had concussion and was seeing things. It was probably fallen trees or debris from damaged buildings.
Three figures were approaching across the field. One wore a white lab coat. Another – who appeared to be floating over the grass – was dressed in a hooded robe. The tallest of the three sported a black suit and bowler hat and carried a cane.
‘Hello? Excuse me!’ the jogger shouted. ‘We need some help over here!’
The strangers murmured. As they drew closer, the old lady saw that two of them were wearing masks covering their faces. One had horns and tusks, the other featured a wide snake-like mouth and jutting fangs. But Halloween had been and gone …
She glanced nervously at the jogger beside her, whose eyes were wide with disbelief.
Sensing danger, she turned and ran.
The tracks of Valian’s tears were the only patches of his cheeks that were clean of dust. Blood trickled from a wound above his ear; his leather jacket was torn at the shoulder. He viewed Ivy and Seb nervously before pulling his finger out of the thimble. The rings of wafer-thin steel that formed the giant shield retracted, revealing a bright landscape beyond.
Ivy wiped her nose and forced herself to her feet. Pain throbbed in her hands and knees; her lungs burned as she heaved in fresh air smelling of mud and rain. The red and white lights of slowly moving traffic blinked in the distance. She recognized the vista: they were standing on a hill in Blackheath Park, overlooking London.
‘This can’t be happening,’ Seb croaked, staggering upright.
Brilliant sunlight illuminated the devastation of their surroundings. The scythe-wielding scarecrows had vanished, along with the rest of the Dirge’s army. In their place was the empty floor of the arrivals chamber, now fenced by a crumbling wall of soil, rock and debris churned from the earth. The entire area had been dragged to the surface, and the roof of the chamber had been destroyed in the process.
Ivy looked over her shoulder to where the Great Gates of Lundinor towered over them, twisted and damaged after being caught in the skirmish. Ten metres of rocky wall were still intact on either side, though wobbling ominously in the breeze. The path through the gates sloped downwards into a giant chasm. ‘Lundinor hasn’t resurfaced in its entirety yet,’ she observed. ‘Maybe Octavius Wrench has to do it in phases because wielding the Sword of Wills takes so much energy.’ The thought gave her a sliver of hope. ‘We can’t give up. Not yet.’
Nearby, a bus had swerved onto the grass to avoid a large crevice in the road. Steam rose from the engine at the back; a few people – commoners – seemed to be sitting or lying in the field a safe distance away.
‘Let’s see if we can help those people,’ Ivy suggested. Adrenalin was still pumping through her veins; she couldn’t stand still.
Seb nodded, though she could see that his hair was singed and his forehead puckered with red blisters.
‘Can you sense the army of the dead?’ Valian asked, looking left and right. ‘They can’t have just vanished.’
Ivy spread her senses across the park, but it was difficult to control her skill after the anguish she’d felt during the battle. Her mind and body felt shaken and weak. She managed to detect a prattle of fractured souls filling the gaping hole behind the Great Gates that dropped down into Lundinor. ‘They’ve stopped just under the surface,’ she said, ‘like they’re waiting for something.’
‘Or someone,’ Seb corrected, holding a shaky finger out towards the crashed bus.
Several shadowy figures were moving with calm purpose across the chamber floor, over from the site of the accident. Ivy caught the disturbing hiss of Octavius Wrench’s wrecked soul among them. She angled her body defensively. ‘It’s the Dirge. They’re carrying the Sands of Change and the Sword of Wills.’
Hemlock was easy to distinguish because of her white lab coat; the others were wearing dark clothes.
‘They’ll kill us if they see us,’ Valian said bleakly. ‘We can hide over there.’ He steered them behind a knoll of soil, where they all crouched down.
Seb inspected his phone screen, being careful to shield the light so that it didn’t give away their position. He spoke in a hushed voice: ‘I can’t call the police. I’ve got no reception up here.’
‘It might have something to do with the Great Gates,’ Valian said. ‘Common technology doesn’t work well in Lundinor. Perhaps the gates are interfering with the signal. We have to think of something else.’
‘With only the thimble, we won’t be able to fight them,’ Ivy decided. ‘Maybe we can outwit them some other way?’
Murmured noises signalled that the group had drawn closer. Ivy’s skin prickled as she heard a distressed voice. ‘Let me go!’ a woman was crying. The sound was muffled, as if something was choking her.
Ivy peeked out from behind the mound. The Dirge stood in front of the Great Gates. Ivy could tell who they all were from the masks they were wearing. For the first time she saw Octavius Wrench’s true face, in his Augrit form. His skin was transparent, and through it she saw dark shapes shifting around like shadows under the surface. From the glint of silver in his hand she could tell that he was carrying the Sands of Change. The Sword of Wills hovered over his back, just as it had done when Monkshood had been wielding it to control Valian on top of Breath Falls. As long as Octavius Wrench possessed it, Ivy knew that the underguard would remain under his command.
He was flanked on one side by Hemlock and on the other by Monkshood, who, as he floated, held an elderly woman up by her neck. The woman had greying hair and wore a periwinkle-blue scarf draped round her shoulders, the ends falling over the front of her long wool coat. Her slim legs dangled above the ground as she tried to wriggle free. The poor woman seemed as helpless as a rag doll in Monkshood’s grasp. ‘Please,’ she croaked desperately. ‘What do you want with me?’
Fire burned within Ivy’s belly. ‘She’s a commoner,’ she muttered to Valian and Seb. ‘She’s got no idea what’s going on. We have to save her.’
Ivy had no time to formulate a plan as Seb went racing out from behind their mound, shouting angrily. She supposed that was the only strategy he’d come up with – scream at the evil people until they went away. Her feet pounded on the cave floor as she hurried after him, considering their real options. They were unarmed and outnumbered; how could they possibly win?
‘Leave her alone!’ Seb yelled.
‘Help me!’ The old lady’s voice trembled as she writhed around, longing to be free.
‘You! Again?’ Octavius Wrench snarled and turned a dark stare on Ivy and Seb. ‘What an unpleasant surprise.’ He lifted a gloved finger and, at his signal, Monkshood hoisted the old lady higher. A small squeak escaped from her throat, yanking on Ivy’s heart.
‘Put her down!’ Ivy cried, her nostrils flaring. ‘She hasn’t done anything to you!’
Monkshood parted his robes with his free hand and, in a streak of silver, withdrew his uncommon tin opener. Hemlock lashed her electric flex and plug towards them, cracking against the rocky floor.
‘Kill them all,’ Octavius Wrench commanded. With a flick of his fingers, a trio of grim-wolves came padding through the Great Gates and began sniffing around. ‘And search the area for any more.’
Ivy and Seb started edging back. In her peripheral vision, Ivy noticed Valian run out to join them. ‘Ivy, look out!’ he yelled.
She moved away – just in time – as Hemlock’s plug struck the ground by her feet. She knew it was only a matter of time before she was ripped apart by the plug’s claw-like pins.
All at once a strange noise sounded overhead – a scream combined
with creaking wheels and the high-pitched tune of a nursery mobile. Ivy looked up. Mr Rife – feathered buccaneer’s hat and all – came flailing through the sky, one hand gripped round the handle of a vintage pram. Squashed inside the carriage was a small girl with thick ice-blonde hair.
‘Rosie!’ Valian cried happily.
The pram crushed Monkshood as it landed on top of him. Freed from his grasp, the old lady managed to leap aside in time to avoid being hit as well. She rolled and lay where she stopped, stirring only to rub her head. Rosie jumped lightly out of the pram.
Glaring at Mr Rife, Hemlock charged—
But Mr Rife was ready for her. ‘Right then.’ Tensing his jaw, he opened his jacket to reveal a battery of objects hastily strapped to the inside (Ivy had seen some of them displayed at the auction house). ‘Let’s see how you deal with these.’ He grabbed a staple gun and fired it in Hemlock’s direction. Although no staples shot out, Hemlock slowed. Her limbs jerked as if they were attached to strings being worked by a puppeteer. Then her feet cemented themselves to the ground and her neck went stiff. With one arm sticking out at a right angle and her other hand on her hip, she looked ready to perform the ‘I’m a Little Teapot’ nursery rhyme.
‘Gah!’ she screeched, struggling to break free.
Meanwhile, as Octavius swooped towards the army of the dead and started barking orders at them to attack London, Monkshood activated his tin opener, releasing a horde of razor-sharp crabs onto the cave floor. The slashing noises of their knife-like pincers sent tremors through Ivy’s jaw as she stumbled back.
‘Mr Rife!’ she screamed. ‘Help!’
Mr Rife, catching sight of where Ivy, Seb and Valian were standing, defenceless, threw something at Rosie. Rosie bent her knees and leaped up to catch it. It was a long-stemmed wooden tobacco pipe – the very same one that Rosie and Valian’s parents had scouted years ago in Bolivia. Ivy recalled seeing it on display at the auction house. But how it was going to help now, she couldn’t imagine.
She stared as Rosie blew once into the pipe and then began talking …
… in bird noises? Ivy was still puzzled.
Trilling, tweeting and cooing, Rosie pointed at the surrounding trees as if she was giving instructions. For a second Ivy had no idea what was going on, but then she remembered that the pipe allowed the user to speak any language on earth. She hadn’t realized it included languages that weren’t even human.
The treetops rustled as a noisy flock of pigeons shot out into the sky, then dived towards the crabs. They attacked with precision – pecking at any weak spots in the crustaceans’ shells or picking them up by their claws, only to drop them from a great height. A whirling mass of dust, shell and feathers began to cover the cave floor.
Dodging round the brawl, Valian ran to meet Rosie. ‘You made it,’ he declared, embracing her tightly. His laugh sounded free and happy, in spite of the chaos all about them.
Valian and Rosie’s joy made Ivy smile – she couldn’t help it – as she and Seb hurried towards the elderly lady lying on the ground. ‘Are you all right?’ Ivy asked, kneeling beside her. Very gently, Seb helped the woman sit upright.
She had a cut on her lip, and her scarf had worked loose to reveal puffy red marks on her neck where Monkshood had been gripping her. She looked dazed, but managed to mumble, ‘There are others – by the bus … a young lad.’
‘We’ll help them,’ Seb said. ‘Don’t worry, you’re safe now.’
Above the squawk and clatter of pigeon versus crab, a deep, wicked voice resonated through the air: ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that.’
Ivy’s chest trembled as, a short distance away, Octavius Wrench stepped forward.
‘Your perseverance is pointless,’ Octavius Wrench told them blankly. ‘You can’t possibly beat me: my power is unlimited.’
Leaving the old lady with Seb, Ivy got to her feet. She noticed the Sands of Change still in Octavius Wrench’s grasp and, steeling her nerves, she tried to assemble a plan. Octavius Wrench’s weakness was his pride – he had boasted when he first met them how powerful he was, and again just now. She thought of how he had been the head of a rich and influential family, but how he had stood for election as quartermaster against Mr Punch and lost. Maybe she could use their old rivalry to her advantage.
‘You think you’re invincible, but you’re not!’ she cried. ‘Mr Punch is stronger than you’ll ever be.’
Octavius Wrench’s laughter rumbled deep and low. ‘Mr Punch is currently cowering in an underguard prison under my control, soon to be tried by my new laws. His future is mine to decide. That is weakness, not power.’
Ivy wondered if that was true. She didn’t know what had happened to Mr Punch during the battle. She hoped, wherever he was, that he was OK and that what she was about to say wouldn’t put him in any more danger. Whatever her fears, she refused to let them show. Instead, she took a deep breath. ‘But Hobs are far more formidable than Augrits,’ she argued, saying the name like it was a playground insult. ‘And Mr Punch is a Hob.’
Octavius Wrench’s form shifted almost imperceptibly. The Sword of Wills twitched at his back. Ivy intuited that the information about Mr Punch being a Hob had come as a shock. Hemlock’s eyes flicked towards her leader; Monkshood slowly hovered upright.
Ivy continued quickly, before any of the Dirge could shut her up: ‘I don’t know why that army bother following you,’ she said, pointing to the Great Gates. ‘You’re not the most powerful race of the dead at all. Everything you say is a lie!’
The army became agitated. Ivy’s insult had got a reaction. She just had to push Octavius Wrench a little bit further and her plan would work. She could see Seb and Valian’s anxious faces in the corner of her vision; they were bound to be wondering what she was up to. ‘The truth is,’ she resumed, ‘without natural light, you’re feeble. You can’t even step inside an undermart without using one of Alexander Brewster’s potions. How can you be expected to locate anyone’s soulmate?’
Some of the dead began poking through the shadows of the chasm, taking notice of what was going on.
Octavius Wrench’s neck twitched but his deep voice remained composed. ‘My power is unparalleled. As an Augrit, I can be whoever I want to be. I do not merely change my appearance, but my whole constitution. I effectively become an entirely different race. Any race at all.’ He lifted off the ground and lengthened his arms, grinning malevolently. ‘Let me demonstrate.’ The ends of his jacket flared out as he spun. His strange, transparent face became a blur, and then, when he stopped, his skin looked fleshy and normal. ‘There. Now I am a Hob.’
Not quite, Ivy thought, shuffling backwards.
The air stirred. Monkshood wobbled and, along with several members of the Dirge’s army, slid over the stone floor towards Octavius Wrench as if he was a magnet for the dead. The dead soldiers clawed at the ground, fighting against the invisible force pulling them in.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ Monkshood growled as they were all dragged closer. Splaying his arms for balance, he dropped his tin opener, and the steel crabs disappeared.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Octavius snapped, throwing his arms out. ‘I can’t change back.’
Ivy could see the veins pulsing on his forehead from the effort of trying. ‘You can’t transform again because you aren’t yet a Hob,’ she explained. ‘You see, Hobs are formed from more than one broken soul. So, in order to truly become one, you need first to amass other fragments of soul inside you.’
Monkshood’s tin opener and Hemlock’s electric flex both shot straight towards Octavius Wrench and vanished in a tiny blink of light. He flinched as the broken souls trapped inside them were absorbed within him. His face flashed with panic. ‘NO!’
There was a loud whoosh as Monkshood and several of the dead finally flew the remaining distance to their so-called leader. As soon as they touched Octavius Wrench, their empty robes, and Monkshood’s mask, fell to the floor with a soft thud. The other members of the Dirge’s army re
treated into the shadows.
‘What have you done?’ Hemlock asked in her quiet, calm voice. ‘Where is Blackclaw?’
Ivy didn’t reply; she was too busy staring at Octavius Wrench, who was now the size of a telephone box and getting bigger. The stitches of his black suit ripped apart as his limbs swelled like sausages. Ivy could see his features changing shape. She sensed the broken souls of Monkshood and the other races of the dead fighting within him, trying to wrestle control. Octavius Wrench’s arms jerked, and Ivy saw the Sands of Change slip from his fingers and fly out of his reach into a patch of mud.
Her communications with Mr Punch over the last few days had taught Ivy how problematic existing as a Hob really was. She knew how often the souls within Mr Punch had to compromise to allow one another equal time in charge. Octavius Wrench was power-hungry, with no desire to share anything. Ivy hoped he would find being a Hob a lot more difficult than he realized.
And she was right.
Beneath the rim of his wobbling bowler hat, his face altered. His skin speckled with liver spots; the shallows of his eyes grew deeper, darker. Monkshood’s gaunt complexion, black lips and hollow nose socket appeared. ‘Leader, release me,’ he demanded gruffly.
Then his face changed as fast as a TV switching between channels. This time it became the visage of a creature with cracked russet skin, and tentacles writhing from its neck. ‘Let me out of here!’ one of the dead soldiers demanded. He had a buzzing voice, like a frustrated insect’s.
Then, for a moment, Octavius Wrench reclaimed control, his brow furrowed in a deep scowl. ‘Stop squabbling!’ he bellowed. ‘Allow me to take power—’ But as his concentration finally broke, the Sword of Wills went limp at his back and clattered to the ground.
Ivy’s lungs emptied as she thought of all the underguard forces around the world which would be waking from a bad dream, slowly realizing what had happened. With any luck, they’d be able to jump into action as soon as possible. She looked round and saw the army of the dead begin spilling from the Great Gates. Ivy quickly assessed their body language to see if they meant her harm, but they were all focused on Octavius Wrench, curious to see what was happening.
The Frozen Telescope Page 19
