The chess table was standing in the middle of the room. Mandrake was carefully setting up the pieces. Each slotted into a square on the board – the feet of each piece fitting exactly into indentations in the bottom of the shallow socket. There was just one square left uncovered in the ranks of assembled pieces. Just one piece missing.
The Defeater that Miss Patterson had ordered to kill Sarah if the Knight was not returned looked pale. Jake guessed he had never killed a child before. Maybe he’d never killed anyone before. Maybe he even had children of his own.
Azuras took his seat by the pale ivory-coloured chess table. ‘When all the pieces have been presented, we remove all but one. The order does not matter. But each piece in turn must traverse the empty board and alight on every square it can legally visit.’ He straightened up, golden head gleaming in the mix of candle and moon light. ‘I am ready.’ His voice was an excited whisper. ‘After all this time, I am ready. I shall defeat you Rahan. I shall claim my prize.’
Miss Patterson was still cradling her machine gun. She prodded it towards Jake. ‘Time to decide,’ she said. Her tongue darted out and licked her lips, a quick motion, like a snake or lizard. ‘Will you tell us where the Knight is, or shall I have your friends shot? One by one? Starting with the girl?’
Jake looked round at the others. Sarah met his gaze, but there was no hint of pleading in her eyes.
The Toymaker smiled sadly. ‘You must do what you think is best,’ he said quietly. ‘But whatever you decide that is, what happens as a result is not your fault. You understand?’ He stood up and held out his hand. ‘Good luck. Do the right thing.’
Jake stood up too. He reached out and shook the Toymaker’s hand. As he did so, the Toymaker drew him into a quick embrace. And slipped something into his hand – a small figure. A knight on horseback.
They drew apart, and the Toymaker said: ‘It’s your decision. But maybe they should find out what Rahan the Wise really planned, all those years ago.’
Jake nodded. He pushed the chess piece into his pocket. Then he took it out again, as if it had always been there. ‘Is this what you want?’ he said.
The Knight slotted into its place on the chess table. Azuras surveyed the board.
‘How does it work?’ Mandrake asked in a hushed voice.
‘Wait and see,’ Miss Patterson told him.
The Toymaker cleared his throat. ‘Forgive me,’ he said loudly, ‘but from my reading of the various legends, I assume that it doesn’t work. At least…’ he smiled apologetically, ‘not without the mechanism that Rahan took with him. May I?’ He walked slowly over to the chess table.
The Defeaters tracked him with their guns. The golden, blank face of Azuras followed the Toymaker’s progress. The Toymaker leaned over the table. He tapped at the empty rectangular space on one side. ‘The mechanism slotted in here originally, am I right?’
The metal rods supporting Azuras’s head strained and flexed as he gave a brief, short nod of agreement. ‘I have solved his riddle. Rahan must keep his word.’
‘But he isn’t here,’ the Toymaker pointed out. ‘You can play as much chess as you like. You can do the Knight’s Tour to your heart’s content.’ He held up his hand in apology. ‘Sorry, for as long as you want, let’s say. But it will change nothing.’
‘What are you saying?’ Azuras demanded.
‘The mechanism that Rahan took,’ Mandrake realised. ‘That must have some purpose. It regulated the chess game, perhaps it also tests whether you have solved the puzzle.’
Azuras rose to his feet. The stench of rotting fish wafted across the room on the warm breeze. ‘I do not have the mechanism,’ Azuras said, his voice a mix of anguish and anger. ‘You must find it!’
‘Does that mean we can all go home now?’ Jake asked nervously. He was answered by a glare from Miss Patterson.
‘Perhaps I can help,’ the Toymaker said. ‘In return for the assurance that when this is over we can all go free.’
‘How can you help?’ Miss Patterson demanded.
‘Give me the assurance I ask for, and then you’ll see.’
‘Tell us now or I’ll shoot you all.’
The Toymaker sighed and nodded. ‘Then you’d better shoot us. And the secret you’re so desperate to discover will remain lost forever.’
Azuras walked slowly and ponderously towards Marianna Patterson. For a moment she seemed uneasy, as the golden head stared down at her. But then she smiled. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Whatever you want. Now, what are you suggesting?’
‘Merely that I have something that might serve the purpose. Looking at what is needed.’ He turned to look at Sarah and Jake as he spoke. ‘I know what you were told, but things have changed since you were at the Atherton Archive.’
‘The clock,’ Jake whispered to Sarah. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? It’s made from the same material as the chess table and the pieces. He must mean the Skeleton Clock.’
‘May I?’ the Toymaker asked.
It took Jake a moment to realise he was asking him and Sarah. ‘What do you think?’ he asked her.
‘I don’t think things can get any worse,’ she said. As she spoke, she turned away, looking out through the broken wall across the water.
Jake looked too, sensing she was wanting him to see something. The reflected moonlight, the first hint of morning light behind the tangled mess that was The Twisting. The dome of Whispers, lights flickering in its windows. And the heads of two Phibians just visible in the shadows as they watched and listened from the inky water.
‘Yes,’ Jake said, turning quickly back. ‘Give them the Skeleton Clock.’
*
One moment he was there, the next he was gone. It was so fast Revelle almost missed it. The Defeater was standing at the back of the boat, gun held easily but firmly covering Cath and Revelle as they stood further forward.
There were two of the Defeaters at the back of the boat, another standing closer to the prisoners. Two more were in the cabin, steering the boat inexorably towards the floodlit magnificence of the White Tower.
It was over in an instant. A pale, webbed hand closed over the Defeater’s mouth. There was barely time for his face to register shock and fear before he was pulled backwards – off the boat and into the water. If there was any sound, it was lost in the roar of the motor now going at full speed.
Cath gasped, quickly covering by reaching down to rub her injured leg.
Revelle looked directly at the other Defeater at the back of the boat, moving slightly to mask the view of the man behind them.
‘Still hurting?’ Revelle asked loudly. He helped Cath to sit down on the deck. The Defeaters’ attention was completely on them as he made a play of examining her leg.
‘She all right?’ the Defeater behind them asked. It was the first concern any of them had shown.
‘What do you think?’ Revelle yelled at him. ‘Forget the Tower – you have to get her to the hospital, and fast.’
The Defeater laughed, all concern now gone. ‘No chance.’ The laughter froze on his face.
Revelle turned, and saw – as the Defeater had seen – that the back of the boat was deserted. Both the Defeaters were gone.
‘What have you done?’ the Defeater demanded. He raised his gun. ‘What have you done? Where are they?’
‘Not us,’ Cath assured him. ‘How could it be us?’
As she spoke, hands reached over the side of the boat. All round, dark, glistening figures were hauling themselves on to the boat.
Gunfire – sudden and loud over the engines. The Defeaters in the cabin turning, surprised.
Scales catching the moonlight. A body splashing into the water. Shouts and screams.
More splashes.
Cath, on the deck, looking up at the figures closing in. Revelle beside her, standing defiant, trying not to show his fear. The engine cut out abruptly.
‘Are you here to kill us, or to help us?’ Revelle asked in the sudden silence.
*
/> The moves were so regular and methodical that they seemed almost mechanical. Azuras removed the pieces from the board one by one, placing them in order in the spare slots on the table along the board on each side.
He started with the white pieces. First, the pawns. He placed the first pawn at the back of the board, then moved it one space at a time across to the other side. On each square he pressed the pawn into the hollow recess, and there was a dull click as the mechanism registered the move. Slotted into the side of the table, the Skeleton Clock ticked away the time as regularly as Azuras made his moves.
‘A pawn can move only one space, except for its first move where it may travel across two squares,’ Azuras said as he moved the piece across the board. ‘It can take other pieces diagonally, but for its lonely tour, it can move only forwards.’
He lifted the pawn from the end square and placed it back at the side of the table.
‘You have to do that for each pawn?’ Miss Patterson asked.
‘Each and every piece.’ Azuras was moving the second white pawn across the board. ‘One mistake, one error, and I start again.’
‘Could take a while,’ Mandrake said.
‘Be quiet,’ Miss Patterson told him. ‘Let him get on with it.’
It did indeed take a while, but Jake found himself almost hypnotised by the regularity of the movement. Beside him, he could sense Sarah and her father were the same. All their attention was on the chess table, on the trembling webbed fingers that moved each piece in turn across the board. The only sound was the clicking of the mechanism and the ticking of the clock…
The Knight’s Tour was the most complex. Jake found himself holding his breath as one by one, Azuras took each of the soldiers on horseback through their complicated sequence across the board.
As he moved each Knight, Azuras intoned the coded moves – just as he had in the White Tower. Just as he had for centuries:
‘Pa si pu se te ne se gu ni cu gi ca na ta sa pi…’
Until the knight landed on the final square. Then Azuras lifted the piece from the board, and reached for the next one.
He had already moved all the Pawns, the Rooks, the Bishops. After the Knights, the two Queens were simple – moving space by space across the whole board. Then the two Kings, exactly the same, following in the recessed footprints of their Queens.
And as he moved each figure, it quivered and twitched and flexed, moving itself with increasingly animated and excited life.
‘I can feel it,’ Azuras declared as he moved the final King down the last file of squares. ‘I can feel it. My body will be restored to me.’
Mandrake was staring, wide-eyed and hungry. Marianna Patterson licked her crimson lips.
Slowly, reverently, Azuras lifted the King from its final square and set it back in the spare slot at the side of the table. The cogs and gears of the Skeleton Clock, visible through its empty face ticked round another second.
Then there was succession of clicks and the sound of hidden gears stirring and moving.
Two opposite sides of the table snapped open, springing outwards from under the chess board. Two drawers slid smoothly out.
At the same moment, Azuras gasped. His trembling hands went to his golden face. A thin crack appeared down one side, as the heavy mask began to open.
Jake and the others stared in fascination as Azuras reached for the mask that had covered his face for centuries. Slowly, he swung it open to reveal what was beneath.
‘Is my body restored?’ he asked, his voice a dry, brittle rasp.
Mandrake took a step back. Miss Patterson was looking suddenly pale. One of the Defeaters turned away and retched.
The Toymaker watched impassively. Sarah grabbed Jake’s arm, and suppressed a sob of revulsion, fear, shock.
From within its golden prison, the real head of Azuras looked back at them. Flickering red and orange in the candlelight, its dark eyes were the only living feature that stared out from the pale, bleached bone of the skull.
Chapter 25
For several moments, no one moved. No one spoke. Azuras reached up and touched his face – his skull. Then abruptly, he closed the mask. It snapped shut, the hairline joint invisible once again.
He stared down through the mask at the chess table, its drawers open. ‘What is this?’ Azuras demanded.
Each of the drawers was filled with a fine white powder – like sand or salt. He thrust his webbed hand into one of the drawers and lifted it out again, palm uppermost, dry grains trickling through and spilling back into the drawer.
‘What is this?!’ Azuras yelled, thumping his hand down so that a cloud of the white dust filled the air.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Mandrake said. He sounded nervous, looking from Miss Patterson to Azuras and back again.
‘A masterly understatement,’ Miss Patterson replied. Her face was almost as red as her hair with fury. ‘I knew this was a waste of time. There is no secret. I should never have listened to you, and I won’t make the same mistake again.’ She raised her gun, and the two Defeaters beside her matched the action – all aiming at Mandrake.
‘Wait!’ Mandrake insisted. ‘It’s not a waste of time. It works. Don’t you understand?’ he pleaded. ‘Look!’ He pointed at the grotesque figure of Azuras, still staring down at the chess table, body shaking with anger and frustration.
‘How old is he?’ Mandrake asked. ‘How many years has he survived as just a skull? There must be a secret – or else he’d be dead!’
Jake leaned across Sarah and whispered so that the Toymaker could also hear. For the moment they seemed to have been forgotten. ‘What was he expecting?’ Jake asked quietly.
‘Who knows?’ the Toymaker whispered back. ‘But not this, apparently. Maybe he thought he would just suddenly be himself again – body and soul.’
‘But there’s nothing left of him,’ Sarah said. ‘Nothing except his skull.’
‘And those eyes,’ Jake said, and shivered at the memory of the image.
Mandrake was pacing up and down, shaking his head, breathing heavily. ‘We did everything the legend said.’ He pointed at Azuras. ‘Everything he said. We solved the puzzle.’
‘Perhaps we didn’t,’ Miss Patterson replied. ‘Perhaps he got it wrong.’
‘No, no, no. You checked the Knight’s Tour on the computers. The other pieces have easy journeys to make. We were watching. It worked. The drawers appeared, his mask opened.’ He sighed, thumping his fist down on the workbench so that papers jumped and scattered. ‘Something went wrong. There is something more, something we haven’t…’
Jake’s heart almost stopped as Mandrake hesitated. One of the papers had slipped to the floor when he slammed his fist down on the workbench. He bent and picked it up, staring at it, frowning. Then he was grabbing the other papers, turning them over, sifting through them.
‘What is it?’ Marianna Patterson demanded. ‘What have you found?’
Even Azuras was watching as Mandrake turned to look across the room at Jake, Sarah and the Toymaker. ‘He tricked us!’ Mandrake snarled, pointing at Jake.
‘How?’
Mandrake grabbed a large sheet of paper and held it up, his knuckles white he was gripping the paper so tightly. The paper that showed a detailed drawing of the White Knight.
‘The boy drew its image,’ Azuras said. ‘How is this a trick?’
‘Not the boy,’ Mandrake told him. ‘The Toymaker. That’s what he does – he makes toys. Dolls, boats, rocking horses.’ Mandrake kicked out suddenly, sending the smashed remains of a wooden boat skidding across the floor. ‘Chess sets. Don’t you see – he made a copy. These are design drawings. He made a copy of the White Knight. That’s why the Knight’s Tour didn’t work. We should have noticed that was the one piece that didn’t move at all on its own. The piece is a fake.’
Mandrake screwed the paper into a ball and hurled it away. ‘Where is the real Knight?’ he said, his voice suddenly calm, cold, and cruel. ‘Give it to us, or you all die
here and now.’
Jake swallowed. He felt Sarah’s hand gripping his own tightly. Felt the Toymaker looking at him. Was aware of the guns pointing his way, of Azuras staring across the room. He met Mandrake’s cold gaze. ‘It’s safe in my stash,’ he said. ‘At Whispers.’
*
The Defeaters left to guard the street outside the Toyshop had gone. Marianna Patterson was livid. She ordered everyone out of the shop.
‘In that case, we’ll all go.’ She pointed at the Toymaker. ‘You – bring the table. Carefully. And you children bring the pieces. Carefully. If anything gets so much as scratched on the way, I’ll have a Kraken rip you apart, is that understood?’
Jake started to pick up the chess pieces. Sarah found a hessian bag, and they carefully put the pieces inside. The Toymaker pushed the drawers of the chess table closed and lifted it up.
The Defeater standing just inside the shattered wall at the back of the room grinned as Miss Patterson ushered the children and the Toymaker out of the shop. He lowered his machine gun, and made to follow.
Except that his feet didn’t move. Puzzled, he looked down. Pale, scaly hands with webbed fingers were clasped round his ankles. He gave a startled cry, raised the gun. But it was knocked aside as more pale hands grabbed him from behind, pulling him back through the broken hole in the wall. Down into the dark waters beyond…
*
The Phibians seemed happier in the water. They swam alongside the boat, easily keeping pace, as Revelle steered it back towards the end of Shaft Street.
‘So what next?’ Cath wondered. ‘Heroic rescue attempt? Doesn’t seem your style somehow.’
‘Probably not,’ he admitted. ‘I think a “sneak back then watch and wait” attempt is probably more prudent, at least until we know what’s going on.’
Cath looked down at the dark shapes in the water beside them. ‘Can we trust these… Phibians?’
‘They seem to trust us. It would be uncharitable not to return the favour. Anyway, we probably owe them our lives.’
‘Suppose so,’ Cath said. She peered through the murky windshield at the front of the cabin. ‘Nearly there. Hang on.’ She put her hand over Revelle’s on the wheel – warning. ‘I think we should slow down.’
The Skeleton Clock Page 23
