by Alex Bell
Lex Trent Versus the Gods
ALEX BELL
headline
www.headline.co.uk
Copyright © 2010 Alex Bell
The right of Alex Bell to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2010
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN : 978 0 7553 7316 1
This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
An Hachette UK Company
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
www.headline.co.uk
www.hachette.co.uk
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
CHAPTER ONE - LADY LUCK’S THIEF
CHAPTER TWO - THE MIDNIGHT MARKETS
CHAPTER THREE - THE WISHING SWANNS OF DESARETH
CHAPTER FOUR - THE BINDING BRACELETS
CHAPTER FIVE - MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL
CHAPTER SIX - THE SOULLESS WAKE
CHAPTER SEVEN - THE ENCHANTERS’ BOATS
CHAPTER EIGHT - LEX AND LUCIUS TRENT
CHAPTER NINE - THE SKY CASTLE
CHAPTER TEN - THE BROKEN MIRROR
CHAPTER ELEVEN - MAGIC HATS AND NASAL LICE
CHAPTER TWELVE - THE GOLDEN VALLEY
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - THE DRAGLINGS AND THE WICKED WITCH
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - MATILDA
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - MUGGETS AND WHISKERFISH
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - JEZRA’S PROPOSAL
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - ZOEY
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - THE LANDS BENEATH
CHAPTER NINETEEN - THE LUCKIEST PERSON IN THE WORLD
THREE MONTHS LATER
Alex Bell was born in 1986 in Hampshire. She studied Law on and off for six long years before the boredom became so overwhelming that she had to throw down the textbooks and run madly from the building. Since then she has never looked back. She has travelled widely, is a ferociously strict vegetarian and generally prefers cats to people.
For my grandparents, Ali and Joy Bell,
and John and Joan Willrich
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my agent, Carolyn Whitaker, and everyone at Headline for all their work on this book. Special thanks must also go to my editor, Hannah Sheppard, who was the first person to really get Lex, and whose suggestions and advice made it a much better book. It has been a real pleasure working with her from start to finish.
My family, as always, have offered support and encouragement from the beginning. And my cats - Cindy, Chloe and Suki - have kept me company and prevented me from going bonkers.
Last of all, I should acknowledge EU law and how dreadfully - dreadfully - dull it is. If I hadn’t been so bored out of my mind late one Friday afternoon whilst sitting in an EU law lecture, then Lex might never have walked into my head and I wouldn’t have pencilled his name into the margin of my lecture notes to write about him once I finally got the hell out of there.
PROLOGUE
No one knew the precise date when the Globe had split in half. For many hundreds of years the Lands Above and the Lands Beneath had been nothing more than a metaphorical, symbolical divide. But then, one day, the Gods decided that they had had enough - more than enough, in fact - of their subjects complaining and pestering and whining at them day and night. Being the focus of so much worship can be a tiring business. The Gods needed somewhere that would be quiet - a place they could call their own. And thus, one fateful day, the earth shook and trembled and a great split appeared right across the centre and then the two halves cracked apart like a giant, cosmic, galactic Easter egg. No one alive today could remember the Great Divide, of course, for it had happened many millennia ago now. One might think the planet had never split in half at all had it not been for the ladders . . .
Physicists had happily debated for hours on end how the split was even possible, for the general consensus seemed to be that the planet had been spherical once but now . . . now it was more like a . . . well, like a dumbbell - those weights that impressive-looking men use to make themselves look even more impressive. A dumbbell that had been stood up vertically. The top weight was the Lands Above, the bottom weight was the Lands Beneath and the bar in the middle was the ladders stretching between the two discs.
If you travelled to a certain place in the centre of the Lands Above, you could look down over the edge and see them - thousands and thousands of ladders stretching away through space, linking the top of the planet to its bottom half - the province of the Gods. It was a breathtaking, awe-inspiring sight. Some of the ladders were solid, built of wood and metal and attached to platforms below. Others were no more than rope ladders, waving lightly in the breeze and dusted with space frost.
Just as physicists had debated the mechanics of the Split itself, philosophers had argued heatedly about the theological significance of ladders being used to join the two halves of the planet together. After all, it seemed a most curious choice when the Gods had forbidden people to ever attempt the journey down to the Lands Beneath. If they truly didn’t want people climbing them then why not use poles or wires or anything other than ladders? It was like giving a fat child a gigantic chocolate lolly and sternly telling him he must never lick it . . .
Some said the Gods had used ladders as a test or a temptation or a trick or some other grandly significant theological, symbolical, philosophical form of gesture. Others said it was just because Ladderworld went into liquidation around that time as a consequence of being supremely dull and so there was a surplus of raw materials readily available.
But - at any rate - no one had ever attempted the forbidden journey. For one thing, it would take hundreds of years to travel from one end to the other and so only with magical help would the person actually reach their destination before they perished from old age. But, in addition, people were afraid, for no one could remember what creatures had gone with the Lands Beneath and what might be waiting down there. It was well known that a griffin guarded the ladders near the top and as for what else there might be . . . the mind filled with horrible visions of sharp-toothed, many-tentacled carnivorous things. Besides which, the Gods lived down there. The people of the Lands Above agreed that there was no point whatsoever in attempting the treacherous journey down the Space Ladders to the Lands Beneath when the only things down there were teeth, tentacles and wrathful Gods waiting for them with lightning bolts. There had to be better things to risk your life for.
But . . . but . . . there were also tales of treasure, because there always are. The most beautiful, breathtaking, golden treasures they had down there. And it is a well-known and universal rule that there will always be - has always been - one stupid sod whose strength of greed outweighs their common sense and suppresses that all-important instinct of self-preservation.
CHAPTER ONE
LADY LUCK’S THIEF
The thief, the infamous cat burglar - dubbed the Shadowman by the press - buckled on his safety harness and slowly lowered himself through the hole he had just cut into the gla
ss ceiling of the museum . . .
There are some people who are born lucky. They seem to float through life on little golden wings whilst misfortune, hardship and calamity hurry to get out of their hallowed way. One might say that Lex Trent was such a person.
Last year he had started his apprenticeship with a prestigious law firm in the Wither City. The idea was that he studied the law whilst also working in a firm although, as a seventeen year old, the work Lex was able to do had been disappointingly limited. The novelty of filing and fetching coffee and doughnuts for the real lawyers had been practically nonexistent even to begin with. But the lawyers certainly liked Lex for he had a pleasant manner and an open, honest face. He was always ready to help with a smile and there was no denying that he was a clever, hard-working kid.
Everyone knew that Lex was committed to becoming a real lawyer. He was said to spend every evening of every night cooped up in his accommodation, poring over old law books, soaking up the knowledge they contained, memorising legal rules and precedents. He was going places. The lawyers liked him, the clients liked him and he’d been lucky enough to win the most sought-after apprenticeship in the legal capital of the Globe. The Gods themselves were smiling on him.
But it is a universal law that eventually . . . sooner or later . . . one way or another . . . everyone’s luck runs out . . .
The Shadowman was halfway down the rope, suspended from the cavernous glass ceiling, with the floor of the great hall stretching out twenty feet beneath him, when he felt something on his safety harness break with a horrible, nauseating little snap. He tried to compensate for it, but within seconds one of the ropes had broken free, falling in a long coil to the ground below. Then another ring stretched and broke under the additional pressure. And then the thing buckled altogether and the thief, despite his mad flailing at the ropes, was unable to stop himself from freefalling the rest of the way.
Lex Trent landed with a crash and a shattering of glass, right on top of one of the large display cabinets. Sparkling glass shards skittered across the vast tiled floor like broken diamonds and alarm bells started to wail loudly.
Lex groaned as he struggled off the broken cabinet, relieved to see that he miraculously didn’t seem to have suffered any broken bones or hideous loss of limb, although there were several small pieces of glass sticking into his back, making him rather uncomfortable. As soon as he was on his feet, five guards with dogs all rushed into the room, surrounding him. Lex glanced round at the broken glass at his feet, the remains of the cabinet behind him and his own completely black outfit and realised he probably wasn’t going to be able to talk his way out of this. But, because habit is an inbred thing, he looked up at the guards, pointed towards the door on the left and said, ‘Um. He went that way.’
Mr Joseph Lucas was the senior partner at the law firm of Lucas, Jones and Schmidt. He was a kindly man and he had come to feel genuine fondness for Lex. He knew that Lex was quite small for his age - not very tall and quite thin - so he’d been alarmed and worried when he received a message from the city guards saying they thought they had Lex Trent in one of their cells and that the circumstances were . . . unusual. It would be altogether best if Mr Lucas came down to the station as soon as he could. So half an hour later, the old lawyer was standing in the foyer, shaking the rain from his coat and being apologised to uncertainly by the inspector on duty.
‘I’m sorry to have to call you out at this time of night, sir, but I understand that Lex Trent has no family in the city and—’
‘Yes, that’s right. Where is he? Is he badly hurt? What happened - was he attacked?’
‘Er . . . he . . . ’
‘Well? Come on, out with it!’ the lawyer barked impatiently.
‘The boy we have in the cell is claiming to be Lex Trent,’ the inspector said carefully. ‘But I . . . ’ He shook his head and handed the lawyer a sheaf of paper. ‘You’d better have a look at the report, Mr Lucas.’
Lex sat on the hard, lumpy bed and tried not to twiddle his thumbs. The guards glaring in at him were making him a little nervous. A cell. So it had come to this, at last.
‘I suppose a couple of aspirin would be out of the question? ’ he tried, without much hope. ‘I’ve got a splitting headache.’
‘You should be dead falling from that height,’ one of the inspectors said, slightly sullenly.
‘I’ve always been a lucky guy,’ Lex said, managing a pained grin.
‘Ha! That luck’s run out now, if I’m any judge!’
Lex glanced round the cell. He could see his bag of equipment on the table outside along with his black balaclava and a stack of the Shadowman calling cards that had been in his pocket. More than enough to convict him. More than enough to send him straight to the hangman’s gallows. More than enough to get him a one-way ticket straight to an unmarked grave in the Criminals’ Quarter. But giving up, caving in, quitting . . . these were not reactions that Lex was at all familiar with. Something would turn up because it always did. Lex was, after all, one of the lucky people. Because he had a deal with her. A bargain he was sure she would make good on. Mostly.
‘There will no doubt be scratches and bruises,’ she had said. ‘Quite possibly the odd broken bone, if you’re careless. But you won’t die. I promise you won’t die, Lex.’
And it was nice to have that assurance, although Lex had certainly never been fool enough to trust her word completely. But he was sure it would be all right and that he’d get out of this present mess. After all, the Gods were on his side. Or, more accurately, a God was on his side . . . the Goddess of Fortune, to be exact.
It had been just over a year ago, right before he came to the Wither City, when he was on the run from an angry mob . . . well, perhaps not a mob as such, but a couple of coppers who were really quite irate, anyway. He’d been carrying out a scam that had backfired rather unpleasantly. He’d been caught out and forced to flee. This rarely happened to Lex by that point, for he had worked on the scams during the twelve months since he’d run away from home, refining them and improving them until they were almost perfect. It wasn’t his fault - he was a penniless farm boy - he had to do something to survive. If he hadn’t learnt how to cheat and lie and swindle then he would most likely have been dead in a ditch before the first month was out.
But then he had discovered that not only could he cheat, but that he was good at it. A born natural, in fact. And it was fun, too - much more fun than sweating away on a farm, getting straw in your hair and blisters on your palms. Lex was born to be a crook and had taken to it like a duck to water.
But the day the jewellers came after him was not a good day, for they wouldn’t accept his apologies for trying to sell them a fake ruby brooch. Instead, they were adamant that he was to pay for his crime and so had set the police on him to arrest him for criminal fraud. Prison cells and courtrooms did not sound like a lot of fun to Lex and so he ran - out of the city with the two policemen close behind him. He didn’t have enough of a head start to outrun them and so he ducked into the church on the edge of town. It was big and looked like it had once been grand but was now rundown and derelict, obviously belonging to a God who had lost favour with the people and become unpopular. When Lex slipped inside, pulling the door closed behind him, he saw that it was dark and dank and the amount of dust covering the pews and altar made him sneeze loudly.
This startled the woman who had been sobbing on one of the pews near the front. At once she jumped to her feet and whirled round to face him. Lex cursed his bad luck for he had been sure the manky old place would be deserted.
‘I’m so sorry to disturb you, ma’am . . . ’ Lex began but then trailed off, staring at her. For this was no woman at all but the Goddess of Luck herself. He recognised her from one of the Games he had recently made a lot of money on. She’d been there in the Box of the Gods, watching the rounds. Standing before him now, she was the spitting image of her statues with her long, white toga, trimmed with gold braid and her fair hair piled rather p
recariously on top of her head. The only difference was that she seemed to have been using her sleeve in lieu of a tissue and a few strands of blond hair had escaped to hang loosely around her face.
‘My Lady,’ Lex said, trying to disguise his shock at finding the Goddess in such a state. ‘Please forgive me. I had no idea that you were here.’
The Goddess gave a loud, pathetic sniff. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘They’re going to close the church today anyway.’
Lex glanced round the abandoned place and noticed the life-sized chess pieces for the first time - one knight and one bishop. They were covered in dust like everything else but Lex knew what they really were, or at least, had been - people who had refused to participate in the Games and so had been turned into chess pieces as punishment.
‘Is this your church, my Lady?’
‘It was,’ she sniffled. ‘Before I lost all my followers. They’ve all taken off to worship the Gods of Wealth or Fame or Beauty instead. I lost my last official worshipper last night . . . ’ She trailed off, the faintest glimmer of hope coming into her eyes as her gaze rested on Lex. ‘Whose church are you in, young man?’ she asked.
