The Storm Tower Thief

by Anne Cameron

  “In this testing tunnel, Angus, you will discover the extent of your great gift, while being perfectly protected.”

  The words had barely left Doctor Obsidian’s mouth, however, when the projectogram finally burst into life. A vivid image of palm trees and golden sands appeared before them for a fraction of a second before—

  CLUNK!

  The palm trees began to shiver and wobble violently, as if struck by a sudden heat haze. Angus felt a deep rumbling sensation through the soles of his feet; the very walls of the testing tunnel seemed to shiver and vibrate. Suddenly there was a loud crack. Angus ducked, shielding his head with his hands. Sparks flew above, as if someone had just set off a box of miniature fireworks.

  “Yes, well, that can sometimes happen with projectograms, of course, especially when they haven’t been used for a while, but it is nothing to worry about.” Doctor Obsidian hastily removed the plate from the back of the projectogram. The deep rumbling sensation ceased, and the testing tunnel settled once again.

  “What happened?” Angus asked. There was now an unpleasant smell of singed hair in the room. He had a strong suspicion it was coming from the top of his own head.

  “The use of projectograms can occasionally create a minor atmospheric instability, which, in rare cases, can lead to spontaneous lightning sprites.”

  Angus gulped.

  “I think that’s enough for our first session,” the doctor added, moving Angus hurriedly toward the door. “I will take you back up to the Exploratorium.”

  Angus followed Doctor Obsidian out into the corridor, feeling slightly less enthusiastic about projectograms than he had a few minutes before.

  Angus lay awake for large portions of the night, wondering if he should break his promise to Principal Dark-Angel and tell Dougal and Indigo everything about Doctor Obsidian and the testing tunnel. After all, they already knew everything else that had happened to him at Perilous. And he could definitely trust them both to keep it a secret. He was dying to ask Dougal about the advanced projectograms, but could he justify breaking a promise he’d made in front of Gudgeon and Rogwood just to find out how the things worked?

  By the time he dragged himself out of bed in the morning, being careful not to kick Dougal’s camp bed, the two halves of his brain seemed to be having a furious battle over the issue, giving him an incredible headache.

  Thankfully, he was saved from having to make a decision about anything by the news that a new team of lightning catchers was about to depart from Perilous to tackle yet more icicle storms. He, Dougal, and Indigo followed almost the entire Exploratorium out onto the steps of the main entrance to watch their preparations.

  They were met by a scene of utter chaos. The weather had taken another turn for the worse overnight, and the whole courtyard was now covered in a treacherous layer of slippery ice.

  Gudgeon was helping untangle a team of husky dogs and sleds that had accidentally wrapped themselves around a stone pillar. There were mountains of empty canisters for collecting weather samples and piles of fur-lined boots, as well as what looked like two yaks, which Angus could not imagine traveling up and down in the gravity railway. Principal Dark-Angel was storming about the courtyard, shouting instructions, her face livid with anger.

  “That’s not a happy principal,” Dougal whispered warily as she rushed past them. “She’s got a face like a cloud full of lightning tarantulatis. I’m definitely staying out of her way.”

  “I wonder where this team’s heading,” Indigo asked as Jonathon Hake and Violet Quinn joined them on the steps, both wrapped up against the bitter, icy wind.

  “According to Catcher Mint, they’re going to Athens to help defrost the Acropolis,” Violet informed them.

  Jonathon nodded seriously. “Yeah, apparently it’s buried under six feet of snow and ice.”

  “You’re kidding!” Dougal looked deeply impressed. “If they don’t stop these storms soon, we’ll be heading for the next ice age.”

  “I wonder why they haven’t managed to stop them yet?” Indigo said fifteen minutes later as they climbed the stairs to the Octagon. “I mean, it’s been going on for weeks now, and everyone knows what’s causing it,” she added, lowering her voice. “But if anything, the storms are getting worse, not better.”

  “Yeah, I know, but how do you stop Dankhart when he’s decided to unleash storms full of icicles?” Angus frowned. The thought that the lightning catchers had so far failed in their efforts was even more disturbing than the storms themselves.

  “Principal Dark-Angel must have some ideas,” Indigo said with a thoughtful look on her face. As they had just entered the research department, however, she was forced to keep any more comments on the subject to herself. They made their way silently past the dusty shelves, being careful not to disturb any of the napping lightning catchers, some of whom were already snoring and twitching in chairs suspended above their heads.

  They had finally finished with the booby-trapped books the day before and had now been put to work in the map room. Angus had never seen anything like it before. A collection of giant books occupied one entire wall, each book filled with maps the size of a modest house. It took the three of them, plus Catcher Grimble, just to turn a single page. Eccentric maps from around the world had been hung from every wall; some were knitted and looked wearable, some were carved into thick slabs of stone, others were so microscopic they could only be viewed through a series of powerful magnifying glasses. Angus’s favorite, however, was a living map of the lush, green African savannas, where real swaths of tall grass rustled, and something growled in the undergrowth every time he brushed past it.

  In the center of the room, the floor level sank by several feet, leaving a large square pit where some of the sturdier, toughened maps could be unfolded and walked across. There, real miniature mountain ranges could literally be explored on foot, oceans could be waded through in rubber boots, and clumps of pencil-thin trees had to be stepped over with extreme care, to avoid dislodging any of the pinecones.

  Catcher Grimble had already supervised the unfolding of one of these exceedingly lifelike maps, a particularly hilly one of the North Yorkshire moors, and had instructed them to inspect every inch of it for rips, tears, or troublesome wrinkles. And it was the doddery old lightning catcher who met them as they entered the map room once again.

  “Ah, good morning, ladies!” He smiled at Angus and Dougal. “I trust you are ready for another day of useful work?”

  Angus frowned. Things had not gone smoothly on their first day in the map room. For a start, he’d tripped over a stone bridge and squashed it flat. Dougal had somehow managed to singe a hole right through the village of Giggles-Thicket while ironing out creases. They’d hurriedly covered it up with a number of woolly sheep.

  A faint smell of burning still lingered in the air, however, and Dougal rushed over to inspect the damage. But Indigo approached Catcher Grimble with a thoughtful look on her face.

  “Good morning, sir,” she said, smiling brightly.

  “Ah, Douglas, my boy!” His loud voice boomed around the map room. “Having problems with the crinkles in your map?”

  “Actually, sir, I wanted to ask you a question about the horrible storms we’ve been having,” Indigo shouted back.

  “Storms? Fire away, then, young Drainpipe, fire away.”

  “Well, sir, we were trying to work out why—why they haven’t stopped yet,” Indigo said, phrasing her words carefully. “I mean, it’s not normal, is it, having snowstorms in hot countries.”

  “Normal? Of course it’s not normal!” Catcher Grimble spluttered. “I should have thought that much was obvious.”

  “Yes, sir, but isn’t there anything the lightning catchers can do to make it stop?” Indigo asked, shouting the last few words so he could hear her correctly.

  “Ah, a much more sensible question. There are several ways to stop icicle storms or snuff them out before they really take hold. We have cloud-busting rocket launchers, of course
, and I believe Catcher Sparks and her team in the experimental division have been developing a device for sucking icicles straight out of the cloud before they can fall. Stopping it isn’t the biggest problem. It’s far more important to find out what’s causing the blasted weather in the first place. If you ask me, this has all the hallmarks of an experiment gone wrong!”

  Indigo exchanged skeptical looks with Angus, who had stopped dusting down a church spire and was now listening intently. It was obvious that Uncle Jeremius had not told Catcher Grimble about the secret message from the dungeons of Castle Dankhart.

  “Although there is another possibility, of course,” the catcher added, lowering himself creakily into a comfortable leather reading chair. “The weather could be the work of the monsoon mongrels.”

  “Monsoon mongrels?” Angus asked, puzzled. “What are those, sir?”

  “Not what, Miss Munchfungus, but who. The monsoon mongrels are a most despicable bunch of human beings who work for that blackguard Scabious Dankhart.”

  Indigo gave a small squeak at the mention of her uncle’s name.

  “You mean . . . Dankhart’s got his own lightning catchers?” Angus asked.

  “No lightning catcher would ever help such a villain, Miss Munchfungus. It goes against all our oaths. But there are others who share his disregard for the forces of nature, who are interested merely in the deadly powers that it can unleash, and they have become his servants. The monsoon mongrels have engineered some of the most terrible weather this island has ever experienced. Icicle storms wouldn’t be the worst of it,” he said.

  Angus stared at Catcher Grimble, feeling horror-struck. Why had none of this ever occurred to him before? It seemed painfully obvious now. Dankhart couldn’t possibly have created this many icicle storms on his own. He must have had help. . . .

  Catcher Grimble struggled out of his chair and strolled over to inspect a quilted map of America before starting a heated argument with a reading lamp.

  “Hasn’t your dad ever mentioned the monsoon mongrels before?” Indigo asked Dougal quietly a moment later.

  “Never!” Dougal gasped, looking just as shocked. “I would have remembered something like that. It gives me the creeps just thinking about it.”

  “Hang on a minute, I think Gudgeon might have mentioned them ages ago,” Angus said. He had suddenly remembered the incident at a ferry port, where he’d been knocked unconscious during a rainstorm and where Gudgeon had been forced to release a storm globe to distract the two men in long coats who had tried to follow them. “I’m sure Gudgeon called them mongrels!”

  The shocking revelation that Dankhart had his very own monsoon mongrels occupied every conversation that followed for the next four days. The conversation was interrupted only by the presence of Germ, who had taken to entertaining them most dinnertimes with grisly tales of injuries from the sanatorium.

  “It’s been nonstop since the bad weather started. People keep slipping over on the ice, so we’ve had loads of broken wrists and cracked ribs,” he informed them happily one evening. “And that’s not to mention the sudden outbreak of infectious snow boot boils.”

  “Infectious snow boot boils?” Angus asked warily.

  “It all starts with a nasty little bacterium that lies dormant in your snow boots, for years sometimes, and then one bout of really cold weather and bam!” Germ pounded the table with his fists, making all three of them jump. “It wakes up, feeds off the sweat in your socks, goes mental, and attacks your feet. Before you know it, they’re covered in these horrible green, oozing carbuncles.”

  Indigo, who had been tucking into a bowlful of plump green gooseberries and ice cream, dropped her spoon abruptly and pushed the bowl to the far side of the table.

  “It’s been really gruesome,” Germ added, grinning. “Half the lightning catchers in the forecasting department have already come down with snow boot boils, and there’s a rumor going around that the boils have now spread up to the roof.”

  “They’re not contagious, are they?” Dougal frowned down at his own boots.

  Progress with the Farew’s qube was still torturously slow. Sadly, Dougal’s prediction that they’d have it cracked within a week had failed to materialize, and he’d now resorted to firing personal questions at Angus whenever they had a few spare minutes together.

  “And you definitely haven’t got a middle name?” Dougal whispered as they brushed their teeth in the bathroom one evening.

  Angus shook his head. “No.”

  “Or a nickname?”

  “No.”

  “Or something private only your parents have ever called you, like Dragon Boy or Noodle Head?”

  “Definitely not.”

  Dougal sighed. “Did you ever have a goldfish, then, or a dog, or an imaginary friend when you were younger?”

  “No!” Angus shook his head vigorously, flicking toothpaste everywhere.

  “Isn’t there anything else?” Dougal pleaded, looking desperate. “Like a secret code word for if you ever got into trouble?”

  Angus thought seriously about this before shaking his head again with a sigh. He was beginning to wonder if he would ever get to read the message from his parents. He still hadn’t ruled out the possibility of simply smashing the qube open with a large hammer, despite Dougal’s warnings that this reckless act would almost certainly destroy anything inside it.

  As the days wore on, his thoughts were increasingly occupied by the frustrating qube, Dankhart, his parents, and the monsoon mongrels. This gave him a strange vacant expression, which Catcher Grimble took as a sign that he was suffering from something called winter fatigue. Indigo also seemed rather more preoccupied than usual.

  “Something funny’s going on with Indigo,” Dougal said, bringing up the subject one evening as they sat in the library, reading their survival guides. “Have you noticed how she’s always checking her bag? I accidentally sat on it the other day, and she practically had a fit. I’ve still got the bruises,” he said, rubbing his arm.

  Angus instantly thought back to the moment he’d first seen Indigo in the Pigsty, when she’d slipped something into her bag before they could see it. He’d barely registered the fact at the time; he’d been far more distracted by the Pigsty’s transformation. But there had been other, similar moments since then, when Indigo had quickly become prickly and defensive.

  “I bet she’s got something fishy in that bag . . . something she doesn’t want us to see,” Dougal said.

  Angus frowned. “Like what?”

  “I dunno. Maybe she’s been sneaking booby traps out of the research department.”

  “What? No way! What would she do that for?”

  Dougal grinned. “She could have mice in her bedroom. I mean, those booby traps are vicious enough to catch a whole lightning catcher, so they wouldn’t have much trouble with a few measly rodents.”

  Angus couldn’t help smiling. “She’s probably just got something personal in her bag, like a letter or a diary that she doesn’t want anyone else to read.”

  “Maybe,” Dougal said, sounding skeptical.

  A few days later, they were back in the Rotundra for their first real lesson in cold-weather survival. Angus stared at the large expanse of snow and ice as they entered the amazing glass structure, wondering what they would be tackling. He glanced at his weather watch. It showed him nothing but cool, clear skies. For the time being, at least, there were no storms brewing beneath the glass ceiling. The weather, in fact, was eerily calm; not a breath of wind stirred the fur linings on their heavy winter hoods. Not a single flake of snow fell as they trudged across to where Jeremius stood waiting for them.

  “Uncle Jeremius!” Angus grinned.

  “I hope you three are managing to keep yourselves out of mischief.” Jeremius thumped Angus on the shoulder in welcome. He smiled at Indigo and nodded toward Dougal, who had sat down on a rock and was clearly inspecting his feet for signs of snow boot boils.

  “I thought we might have seen you wa
ndering around Perilous,” Angus said.

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve been spending most of my time in here, teaching cold-weather survival lessons. Besides, it’s gotten a bit too crowded up in the main Exploratorium for my liking, so I’ve been sleeping in a very cozy tent instead.” He pointed toward the campsite. “And the rest of the time I’ve been helping my fellow lightning catchers from the Canadian Exploratorium set up an emergency cold-weather training course.”

  He glanced over his shoulder, and Angus suddenly noticed something in the distance that definitely hadn’t been there before. Occupying almost a quarter of the Rotundra and camouflaged under layers of drifting snow and ice, it looked like a huge obstacle course. There were thickets of giant icicles standing twenty feet tall, enormous walls of frozen water, and a large lake littered with magnificent drifting icebergs.

  “It’s been set up especially for those lightning catchers who need a quick refresher in cold-weather dangers and survival skills, before tackling any icicle storms.”

  Angus gulped. Even from a distance the course looked formidable. “S-so you’re not expecting us to . . . I mean, we’re not . . .”

  “Relax.” Jeremius grinned. “I won’t be sending any lightning cubs across those icebergs—unless, of course, one of you does something exceptionally brainless, and then I might consider it.”

  Angus glanced over at the Vellum twins—two of the most dim-witted trainees in the history of Perilous. Seeing them struggle across the treacherous obstacle course would be one of the highlights of his year. . . .

  Two minutes later, their first cold-weather survival lesson began in earnest.

  “Before we begin,” Jeremius said, gathering the lightning cubs before him, “has everyone read chapters one to three of Isadora Sleet’s survival guide, as I asked?”