by Dave Butler
The djinn screamed in pain and looked down.
Charlie looked too. A yellow-green cobra pulled back from the djinn’s thigh, weaving as if exhausted. Blood from two fang marks ran down the djinn’s leg, and the djinn released Charlie to clap its hand over the wound.
Charlie grabbed the cobra and ran, stuffing the snake into his pocket as he went.
He threw the dice at the floor, bouncing them just once and catching them again in his hand. Spiders scattered from the point of impact. He did it again and again, leaving a trail of fruit peels, rubies, worms, gold coins, thorns, pomegranate seeds, ashes—
Perfect—Charlie conceived a plan.
He swerved, narrowly avoiding the shaitans. He ran his trail another hundred feet and then ducked behind a pedestal on which a hen slept, brooding over a clutch of dully gleaming metal eggs.
He had maneuvered himself so that the giant’s iron bed lay between him and the trail of riches and curses. On the far side of the trail hissed the shaitans.
He waited, listening. The hissing was too loud; he’d never hear the djinn’s footsteps. He was entirely relying on the hope that the djinn would follow him more or less directly.
There it was. Charlie didn’t see the djinn himself, but saw a small pile of silver coins scatter, as if of their own accord.
Charlie hurled himself forward, his legs trembling from the unwinding of his springs—
and slammed into the iron bed frame, sending it flying.
He saw a flash of the djinn’s face and chest as the bed knocked his legs out from under him, swept him away, and carried him into the shaitans’ cage.
The shaitans shrieked with joy and leaped onto the bed. Like monkeys they bounced up and down, and as they sank their teeth into the invader, they one by one took on the appearance of a djinn.
Charlie fell to his hands and knees, shaking.
“Ollie,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry, but I need your help.”
Bamf! Ollie was beside Charlie, also shaking. As Charlie fell forward onto his belly on the cold stone, he felt Ollie’s hand grab the mainspring in Charlie’s back and give it a single, uncertain twist.
And Charlie felt fine.
“Hold on, mate.” Ollie’s voice was ragged. “Let me give it a few more turns.”
“Not too many,” Charlie said. “There’s another djinn.”
Ollie turned the spring several times, and then they both climbed to their feet.
Then Ollie fainted.
Charlie grabbed the other boy before he fell.
“Ollie,” he said.
Ollie was pale, and didn’t answer. His breathing was shallow.
He needed help.
If only he had fainted in snake form, Charlie thought. At least then he’d have been more manageable.
But Ollie had come back for Charlie, and risked his life to do it. Charlie couldn’t leave his friend now. He hoisted Ollie over his shoulder, turned, and ran away from the hissing of the shaitans and the screaming of the djinn, toward the stairs.
He threw the dice ahead of him, making a trail of djinn-locating small objects. Stooping at the top of the stairs without slowing down, he snatched the dice from the floor and threw them ahead of him again, down the steps, watching the small objects carefully as the sun came up on both floors, flooding the halls with sudden light.
A spray of rotten eggs bounced unnaturally. To one side of the dice’s trail, eggs hit something unseen and either shattered in midair or fell straight down, cracking on the stone.
The djinn.
Charlie jumped over the banister on the opposite side of the stairs, feeling a sword swish through the air behind him as he fell.
Was that all he needed to do? Had he evaded two djinns, and there were no further obstacles?
The cloudy white light on the dwarf magician’s throne beckoned, and Charlie could see within it hints of the form of Papa Wilhelm, coalescing and reaching out to him again.
But what if there were more djinns, hiding in wait around the throne?
And worse, what if now those djinns had seen Charlie’s trick with the dice?
Charlie raced to the foot of the stairs and scooped up the dice. Appropriate, since he was about to gamble. But really, all adventure was gambling, and all life was adventure. He just had to place his bet and try his hardest.
Charlie sprinted toward the space to the throne’s left, as if the throne were at twelve o’clock on a clock face and he was charging toward ten. He desperately hoped that no djinn was lurking this far from the throne.
Thirty feet, he thought the distance was.
Reaching back with his arm, he threw the dice ahead of him, toward ten o’ clock. He hoped that would give any waiting djinns the idea that he intended to run in that direction. He also hoped their eyes would follow the dice, which would distract them, even if only for a second.
At the same moment he threw the dice, Charlie turned right and accelerated.
He took three very fast steps, to close the gap a little more.
Then he jumped.
Horrible visions of himself and Ollie both being sliced right down the middle filled his mind.
He heard the swoosh! sounds of not one but two swords whistling through the air. The first missed—his feint and his distraction had worked!
The second blow struck Charlie’s leg and knocked him out of the air.
Charlie rolled, trying to shield Ollie’s head with his body and mostly succeeding. When he stumbled to his feet at the foot of the throne, two djinns charged directly at him, swords high—
Charlie turned and jumped into the Library Machine.
Charlie thought he felt Papa Wilhelm’s hands carrying him through the cloud of white light, and then he and Ollie tumbled onto the carpet.
BOOM!
The floor beneath him shook, and Ollie stirred in his arms.
“What ’appened to Ollie?” Bob stood over the two boys, looking down. “ ’E don’t look good.”
“It’s a long story,” Charlie said, laying Ollie on the carpet and climbing to his feet. “But the point of it would be that Ollie saved me, twice, and was pretty badly hurt doing it.”
Ollie cracked one eye slightly and raised his head. “That ain’t the only point, mate. The much more interesting point is that I carried you inside me. That ain’t shape-changing, Charlie, that’s wizardry, and I used it to beat old Suleiman at his own game. I won a wizards’ duel, mate. I’m a magician.”
Ollie’s eye shut and his head fell again.
Bob bit her lip, sniffed hard, and stepped back.
Lloyd Shankin swooped down on Ollie like a crow and touched his head, singing an englyn under his breath with eyes fixed tightly on the chimney sweep. Something was odd about Lloyd, and it took Charlie a moment to realize what.
The dewin wore a long blue tabard, and he held in one hand a short white staff.
He couldn’t worry about Lloyd’s clothing now. Charlie tottered away. Was his limp more pronounced? Had he been damaged?
Thomas came from nowhere and hugged him. “Did you know Bob’s a girl?”
Charlie nodded.
“Charlie, you’ve been damaged.” Jan Wijmoor stooped to look at the cuts in Charlie’s leg and side. “And there’s an old wound here too.” The kobold was shaking, and his face had turned nearly as red as his hair.
Charlie was a little surprised to see the engineer, but more surprised at the kobold’s emotion. “What’s wrong?” Charlie whispered.
“It’s all my fault, Charlie,” the kobold whispered. “All of this. It felt as if maybe helping you and Thomas would make up for my mistakes, but…”
Wijmoor took a deep breath and stood back.
The library balcony was crowded. In addition to Charlie, Thomas, the sweeps, and Lloyd, Rabbi Rosenbaum an
d his daughter stood nearby. The rabbi looked grief-stricken—he still wore the long white scarf over his shoulders, but it was scorched now, as if he’d run through fire, and his face was streaked with soot. Gnat hovered in the air beside her cousin Hezekiah and Undergravine Juliet, and behind them was a corps of pixie warriors.
Papa Wilhelm stood in the center of them all, ghostly and smiling.
“What’s going on?” Charlie asked no one in particular.
“Humans,” the undergravine said. “Humans couldn’t leave well enough alone. Hesse was a land where all folk lived in peace, and that offended them.”
Her words stung him.
“Not all humans.” The rabbi’s voice was heavy with sorrow. “Far more than I would have liked to believe, but not all of us. I will never believe that.”
“Not all,” the undergravine admitted. “Do you too wish to join my service?”
“Wait,” Charlie said. “What do you mean, ‘you too’? Gnat, did you—”
Gnat shook her head. “Not I, Charlie. My path lies with you still.” She pointed at Lloyd.
Lloyd stood up. Ollie’s natural color was returning and his eyelids fluttered, and Charlie got a better look at the Welshman’s new clothes. He was dressed like a bigger, bluer version of Hezekiah, only his tabard bore a different coat of arms: crossed spears and a butterfly’s wings, to match the emblem Charlie had seen at the underground crossroads.
“Aye,” Juliet said. “I’ve taken the dewin as my herald. It seemed it might be useful to have a human in my service at this time.”
“I had to, Charlie,” the Welshman said. “I had to help, because…well, because that’s my journey. And I knew a song that I thought would heal the undergravine’s daughter, but Undergravine Juliet wouldn’t let me sing my englyn over her child until I agreed to enter her service with an oath. I think she worried I might do something harmful.”
“You want to do good.” Charlie nodded. “I understand.”
Lloyd grinned, eyes wobbling. “And it worked.”
“We fly!” The undergravine raised her spear, pointing at the tall stained-glass windows overhead.
“I don’t believe I have the talent for that, Your Ladyship, either in wings or in magical strength.” Lloyd bowed his head respectfully. “But if you tell me where to meet you, I can walk very fast.”
The undergravine changed the angle of her spear, pointed toward the horizon. “We fly…low.”
“Where?” Charlie asked. “What’s that way? If your realm is being attacked, don’t you want to defend it?”
“Iron men are already in the undergraviate,” Juliet said, grinding her teeth. “We carry our eggs with us, but we are forced to march to war.”
“The Anti-Human League assembles in London,” Hezekiah said. “War is coming to Britain, as it has already come here. We will strike mankind from a unified position of strength.”
“Don’t do this, Cousin,” Gnat pleaded.
Hezekiah’s face was solemn. He reached forward to touch the tooth of the giant Hound that hung as a trophy around Gnat’s neck. “You can stop me. Three mighty deeds, and then challenge Elisabel. That’d make you baroness.”
“Aye,” Gnat agreed. Gnat had been exiled from her mother’s barony, Underthames. To retake the throne, she needed to complete three mighty deeds and then challenge her cousin Elisabel to a duel.
“I do not ask you to do that,” Hezekiah said. “That would be disloyal to Elisabel. And Seamus would never ask it either.”
“I understand.” Gnat’s tears were so large they filled her eyes entirely.
The undergravine flew down the ramp and out a door Charlie couldn’t see. With a last nod, Lloyd Shankin ran after them, blue tabard flapping behind him.
Following them with his eye, Charlie saw a mob lower down in the library, knocking over shelves and tearing books from the shelves. Were they students? “What’s happening?”
“Marburg has fallen into chaos,” the rabbi murmured.
“My end is here,” the phantasm of Papa Wilhelm said behind Charlie.
Charlie looked up. From higher in the library, and descending toward him, he saw men in Prussian black and cream, with skulls and crossbones on their uniforms. They carried rifles with bayonets fixed to their ends, and Charlie saw with a start that they had mechanical limbs. Their arms and legs shone like brass—
and they ran fast.
“ ’Ey!” Bob pointed at the well of the library.
Charlie rushed to the banister to look down. The boxy brass machines of the card catalog had been unbolted and dragged from their places in the center of the floor, and a pit had been dug. Around the pit a crew of dwarfs in white-and-purple-striped trousers worked a pulley that hung by a tripod platform erected over the hole. The dwarfs had two donkeys tied to a rope that ran through the pulley, and they dragged the animals forward, pulling a large white stone out of the pit. Other dwarfs stood watching, with lit torches and metal cans in their hands.
The dwarfs all wore conical masks, which made them look a little birdlike.
“Don’t breathe in the dust!” a dwarf cried. His voice sounded metallic through his mask.
Dust? Did the dwarf mean smoke from the torches?
A pair of dwarfs pushed a sledge under the tripod and above the hole. Without any further talk, the dwarfs holding the donkeys’ halters backed the animals up, lowering the boulder onto the sledge. Charlie squinted at the rock—from this distance, it looked to be the size of a person. “What’s that white stone?”
“That is the spirit stone.” Papa Wilhelm smiled sadly. “That’s my soul…on this earth.”
“Why are they taking it?” Charlie asked.
“I’m afraid they can only have evil purposes, Charlie. The stone is the closest thing to spirit this mortal earth can hold.”
“We’ve got to go.” Ollie stood, taking a deep breath. “And much as I’d like to go back to the Souk of Wonders and do a bit of shopping, I don’t want to run across Suleiman again.”
“Last time, he was the one who found us,” Thomas said, trembling.
Charlie snapped out of his thought. “Then where to?”
He was asking Papa Wilhelm, but Ollie answered. “Best guess, mate? Believe it or not, the Punjab. The Almanack’s got an old story about a demon lord named Ravana, and it mentions his nail. Demons come from your intellectual world, don’t they? We want to go to Mayapore. Palace of the Rajah Amir Singh.”
“Singh?” Charlie’s father’s real name—the name he’d never told Charlie—had been Singh. “You’ve been doing some studying.”
Ollie shrugged. “I heard you and Thomas talking about the three nails, and I’ve been reading like a madman every spare moment since.”
“What are they doing?” Rosenbaum pointed down into the well.
Charlie took a last look into the hole. The donkeys, reattached now to the sledge, were pulling the stone away. The dwarfs with cans sloshed liquid in a circle around the floor of the library. Charlie could smell the chemical stink of oil. “Fire. They’re going to burn down the library.”
He had no time to wait to see it.
“Papa Wilhelm,” he said. “Can you take us to the palace of Rajah Amir Singh?”
Papa Wilhelm smiled. “I can.” Behind the phantasm, the white cloud of light swirled and coalesced into a lush garden. Its ferns and drooping trees were bathed in pale luminescence, and Charlie half imagined he could smell sweet tropical plants. “Goodbye, Charlie.”
“I’ll come back,” Charlie said.
“You won’t.” Papa Wilhelm’s face was sad. “I am in the spirit stone, Charlie, as the stone is in you. This is my final act, and you and I will not meet again.”
As the stone is in you? What on earth could that mean? And why wouldn’t Charlie come back—did Papa Wilhelm think Charlie was go
ing to die?
Bang! Bang! Bullets whizzed past Charlie, disappearing into the white light. Were the bullets striking trees in a garden in the Punjab?
Charlie looked back toward the library and saw that the half-machine soldiers were coming around the bend. The foremost were charging, bayonets leveled to stab at Charlie and his friends. The ones in the rear crouched and shot with their rifles.
Bang! Bang!
“Get down!” Charlie shouted to his friends. “And get through the gate!”
“Charlie…,” Thomas pleaded.
Charlie pushed his brother into the Library Machine.
Papa Wilhelm flickered, was dark for a moment, and then reappeared.
“Go!” Charlie shouted.
“I must stay here, Charlie,” the rabbi said. He spoke with surprising deliberation, given that half-machine soldiers were charging him. “I can’t leave my people now. I’m disappointed and I’m afraid, but I’ll stay. My daughter could go with you.”
“If I’m going to be in danger, Father, let me at least do it with you. Now go!” Rachel pushed her father down the ramp and toward the secret door.
Jan Wijmoor stared at Papa Wilhelm with tears running down his cheeks. “I am sorry,” he said to the phantasm. “This is my fault. I took Zahnkrieger on as my apprentice, and I indulged him.”
Papa Wilhelm flickered again but then smiled. “Sometimes our children do not love us as they should.”
“Charlie,” Wijmoor said. “I am in a pickle and I need to call on your assistance. My library is being destroyed. Will you help me?”
Charlie pushed the kobold through the gate.
“This would be a mighty deed,” Gnat murmured, eyeing the charging machine soldiers.
“It would mean your death,” Charlie told her. “What would be the point?”
Gnat nodded, and flitted into the white cloud.
The soldiers farther away continued to fire.
Charlie grabbed the nearest bookcase. It was heavy, but he found he could tear it out of the floor and wall, and he pushed it over in the direction of the attacking soldiers. That would slow them down.
