“YOU ARE BRAVE TO COME HERE, RINGLING,” boomed the dragon.
“Desperate times call for desperate deeds, old one,” said Benissimo, who had regained his composure and removed his top hat as a show of respect.
“SO MY CHILDREN’S CHILDREN TELL ME IN THEIR SLEEP.”
“Then you know of what goes on beyond your cave?”
“I DO NOT NEED THEIR SONGS TO TELL ME OF THE DARKENING KING. I FEEL HIM AS HE STIRS. IT IS THE ENGINEER THEY SING OF – IS THIS HE?”
“Yes, old one. I was told it was to him you wished to speak.”
Tiamat lowered his head with a great rushing of wind so that he could eye Ned more closely. Hot air and burning sulphur filled Ned’s nostrils and his cheeks reddened with heat. He’d been wrong to fear the Stag King, to be in awe of the creature. Tiamat was all-encompassing, his head large enough to blot out the cavern, his breath hot enough to peel away Ned’s skin. It didn’t matter that Ned had lost his power; nothing mattered in the face of Tiamat. In his gaze you were his to do with as he wanted.
“I am …” Ned mumbled.
“YOU ARE SMALL.”
Ned winced. He was quite sure the creature had said it the way someone might say “snack”. And, powers or not, he was truly small, truly insignificant under Tiamat’s gaze.
“Yes, I-I suppose I am.”
“THEN YOU MUST GROW STRONGER!” boomed the dragon. “OR YOU WILL FAIL.”
As Ned looked into the creature’s eyes, he sensed the cave and his companions slipping away from him as though he might be swallowed into the creature’s mouth without it even moving.
“Fail how, Tiamat? What is it we must do?” asked Benissimo, and the dragon’s gaze thankfully turned away from Ned and on to the Ringmaster.
“YOUR DEMON DID NOT TELL YOU?”
“Only that you knew of something, some ancient magic that we might use to fight the Darkening King.”
Tiamat reared up angrily, pointing his great mouth to the top of the cavern, before blowing – and blowing hard. A huge pillar of molten, spittled fire poured out of him and into openings in the roof of the cavern. Far above them they heard the mountain tremor like a volcano as the dragon’s fury was unleashed outside and into the cold Siberian air. Boulders began to tumble and break around them, till Ned thought the dragon might bring down the entire roof.
“TIAMAT WAS FIRST AND EVERYTHING BELONGED TO TIAMAT.” Then his voice grew quiet and his great eyes closed. “Until they tricked me.”
“Who, old one? Who tricked you?” asked Benissimo.
“THE ONE YOU CALL THE DARKENING KING CAME AFTER ME! HE WAS NOT ‘FIRST’. BEFORE BOOKS AND KINGS, BEFORE MANKIND, THE FEY WERE MY SERVANTS, TO DO MY BIDDING WHERE I WOULD NOT GO. BUT THE DARKENING KING WHISPERED TO THEM, TOLD THEM HOW THEY COULD GAIN THEIR FREEDOM AND IN DOING SO MAKE ME WEAK.” His great eyes opened again and were full of rage. “THE HEART STONE – MY HEART – THEY STOLE IT AS I SLEPT. IT IS THE SOURCE OF THEIR MAGIC AND IT IS MINE.”
“You wanted to tell the boy this? How they wronged you?”
“YES AND NO. I WANT REVENGE FOR THE WRONG THAT WAS DONE TO ME. JUST AS HE WHISPERED TO THEM, I NOW WHISPER TO YOU: FIND THE HEART STONE. IT IS OF A PARTICULAR MAGIC, ONE THAT EVEN HE DOES NOT FULLY UNDERSTAND.”
Tiamat swayed his great head left and right, like a snake being charmed.
“USE IT AT THE MOMENT THAT HE RISES AND YOU WILL DESTROY HIM.”
“Will you help us?” asked Ned.
“DO NOT ASK ME – ASK THE HEART STONE. NOW LEAVE ME – I AM WEARY.”
And the great dragon began to settle at the bottom of its cave, its head hitting the rocks with a thunderous crash. But there was one burning question that Ned needed to have answered.
“Before we go, could you please just tell me … why did you ask to see me?”
“MANY SONGS MY CHILDREN HAVE SUNG OF YOUR DEEDS. I WANTED TO SEE WHAT YOU ARE MADE OF.”
“Why do you care?”
“BECAUSE IT IS YOU WHO MUST USE THE HEART STONE.”
And with that, the great dragon closed both eyes completely and, with a signal from one of its mighty claws, indicated both that they should leave and where their exit lay.
Ned wanted to tell Tiamat that he was wrong, that the old Ned might have been the one to do it, but that this Ned had lost his powers. But he was far too frightened of the creature to disagree with him, or disappoint him, and besides, he could tell by the trembling snore that shook the cavern that the mighty and ancient Tiamat was now fast asleep.
Trapped
ed, Benissimo and Mr Fox emerged on the other side of the mountain at the top of a steep hill and away from the protective antlers of the herd. The sun had fully risen and as Ned laid Whiskers on the ground, his wind-up rodent let out a squeak.
“Oh, so you do have a tongue, do you?”
The Debussy Mark Twelve ignored Ned and peered down at the forest beneath them. Its little head bobbed one way and then the other. When he turned around, the rodent’s eyes were blinking like furious bulbs and in frantic Morse code. Just as worrying were the telltale rumblings from the Tinker’s perometer, and for maybe the first time Ned wondered if the little device did more harm than good.
“What is it, boy? What have you seen?”
Ned and Mr Fox deciphered the message together.
A long blink: “T”. A dot, a dash and another dot: “R”. By the time Whiskers had finished, “TROUBLE” had been clearly spelt, but not nearly as clearly as the sound of the ground trembling at the foot of their side of the mountain.
“Ground thumping and blinking mice, not an agreeable mix,” said Benissimo. “Mr Fox, binoculars are standard issue with your lot, aren’t they?”
Mr Fox already had them pressed up to his eyes.
“They’re still in the forest’s cover but I can make out Darklings, and what would appear to be … oh dear. I think they have the metal Guardians that Tinks told us about with them.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere, Mr B.”
“No obvious exit then?”
“No, nothing obvious,” said Mr Fox.
Benissimo’s whip unfurled itself and the Ringmaster’s face hardened.
“Pup, I’m not sure that this will end well. Fox and I will carve you a way out of here. After that, head west and don’t look back. May Odin protect you.”
Ned gulped before cursing his ring. If only he could still use it, harness its power somehow, he could help them at least.
Down below, the forest seemed to grow up the foot of the mountain, moving slowly at first, then faster and faster.
“Gorrn, I think I’m going to need you – rather urgently. Whiskers, old chum, stick with me, would you?”
Whiskers turned his head to one side. It was the turn of his little metal gears thinking. Finally he bobbed it in a “yes” and sidled up to Ned.
Down below the creeping shadow of forest became more detailed. It had arms and legs and teeth and claws. A row of yellow-eyed gor-balins walked slowly up the hill and at their front: a Demon. It was not disguised in human form like Sur-jan had been in Mavis’s. It had deep-set eyes like firepits, a great set of horns as wide as its shoulders, and grey-black skin to match its grey-black teeth. Black armour covered its bulky muscles and it carried two curved scimitars, one in each hand. On its left and right were a pair of the Central Intelligence’s Guardians. The Tinker’s intel was right. The two machines marched in ordered silence, quite like the one that had almost flattened the troupe back at the Circus of Marvels all those months ago, though these ones were newer in design. Their frames were of burnished steel and chrome, more rounded than the angular scrapheap he’d fought before. It was like looking at an updated car design. These were faster, lighter and built for improved combat. They had no need of weapons – their arms were serrated and each of their metal hands ended with blade-like fingers worse than any claw Ned had seen. The one identical feature of the Guardians was their faces, moulded to look like protective angels, and
all the more unsettling on their deadly frames.
Mr Fox put away his binoculars and started to grin.
“Why in Zeus’s name are you smirking, Mr Fox?”
“Fox will do, Mr B.”
In the air behind them there came the sound of distant thrumming.
“No first name, Fox?”
“Not that I know of, and I’m smirking because of Ned’s mouse.”
“Whiskers?! Hell’s teeth, man, I really don’t think now’s the time to be marvelled by a wind-up pet!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t know about that, Mr B. We jossers have our own magic though, and you might be interested to know that some of it was put into Whiskers by the Tinker before we left. Nanites, they’re called, and they’re more than enough for our friends in the sky to find us.”
Above them, well over a dozen twin-bladed helicopters loomed out of the night, their powerful blades roaring.
Mr Fox looked up. “CH-47s – Chinooks, and I imagine with quite a useful payload.”
Benissimo’s moustache rippled as he broke into part of a grin. “Mr Fox, I have absolutely no doubt now that my brother will know of your involvement and that we are in alliance.”
“Unavoidable, Mr B.”
“Do you know, as much as it pains me to admit it, I’m rather glad you came along after all.”
Seconds later, they were hammered by the beating wind of Mr Fox’s cavalry, hanging over them in a controlled hover. When the first hatch was flung open, it was not a grey-suited operative of the BBB that Ned saw, but a focused wall of fur and muscle, and one that he dearly loved.
“George!” he yelped, and a second later, “Lucy!” as, next to the great ape, he spotted the golden hair of his friend and Medic.
From the sides of the swarming Chinooks came men, women and fair-folk, some suited in heavy grey armour, others with no need. Two trolls as large as granite rhinos pounded down the hill and hot on their heels came three dryads. As they ran, the ground at their feet erupted in green-vined chaos. Jossers and fair-folk ran together as one, and Mr Fox and Benissimo’s strange alliance was about to be tested for the first time.
Two members of the cavalry held back: a bright-eyed Lucy and her hulking sidekick, George.
“Hello, old bean. Did you miss us?”
Alliance
or-balins prefer better odds and their gaunt faces dropped as the grey-suits and fair-folk charged. Now emboldened, Benissimo and Mr Fox joined George and the three of them hurled themselves at the Demon, George knocking it to the ground with his shoulder as Benissimo’s whip turned to flames and caught it about its neck. At its sides, grey-suits with their electrical batons were firing bolts of electricity at the Guardians in great arcs of blue light, and the creatures, though unable to feel pain, shuddered and stopped mid-strike.
Heart racing, Ned stole a moment by the Chinooks and their spinning blades with Lucy. Gorrn was undulating protectively in the shadows and Whiskers had already crawled up her leg and hopped into her readied arms.
“It’s all right, Whiskers, everything’s going to be fine,” she hollered.
Ned watched her as she peered at the chaos. She looked different somehow – there was a sureness to her gaze that he hadn’t seen before.
“Thanks for coming, Lucy. It’s good to see you.”
“You know, none of this would have been necessary if you’d just told us where you were. Now come on, quickly – let’s give them a hand.”
Ned’s heart sank. Whatever trouble he’d been having with his Engine was clearly his alone. Lucy was already pacing down the hill and he hadn’t the courage to tell her about his issue, or that he’d be useless in the fight.
“Ned?” said Lucy, turning back. “Don’t just stand there – they need us!” But her face quickly paled at the sight of something behind him. “NED!”
He turned too late. A clenched fist came at him at a pace and struck him in the cheek. Dazed and confused, he fell to the floor, pain searing up the side of his face, and the world for a moment became black and blurred. Not all the gor-balins had cowered from the charge. In the clash that had followed, four of the creatures had used the chaos to circle round their flank and they now launched themselves at Ned and Lucy. Ned heard the squeak of his mouse as it leapt from Lucy’s arms towards him, and saw Gorrn rise up, his vast mouth descending violently on one of the assassins.
“Grak!” he hollered, and the gor-balin was gone.
Lucy stood her ground, closing her eyes in deep thought, and another of the creatures howled. Ned could only guess at what she’d done inside its mind, but her powers proved more than enough to bring it to its knees.
The other two separated, one thrusting at Gorrn with its sword.
The other, to Ned’s horror, pulled out its dagger and held it to Lucy’s throat. It smiled. Even with its comrades fallen and the battle behind it all but lost, the gob’s yellow eyes and sallow cheeks oozed with delight.
Lucy tried to pull away but the thin-limbed creature held strong, the claws from its hand digging at her arm.
“Ned?!” she cried.
His voice wouldn’t carry over the din of the Chinook’s blades or the raging battle, and even if it could, Benissimo and Fox would never reach them in time. Ned could only watch, just as he had outside Mavis’s, just as he had a dozen times before.
“Lucy, I—”
“Squeak!”
Whiskers bit at the gor-balin’s ankle and it howled before kicking the brave rodent away. Finally it laughed, eyes locked with Ned’s as it drew the dagger so close to Lucy that her skin flared pink. He was going to cut her, to kill poor innocent Lucy right then and there, and there wasn’t anything that Ned could do about it.
A fury fired inside him and he screamed, “STOP!”
And just as he did so, a pain shot up his arm, as bright and white as lightning. He could feel the atoms in the air with his mind, feel them fusing and growing in mass, hurtling at one another to be reshaped and whoosh! – his ring fired.
The gor-balin screamed and his scream was matched by another dozen down the hill. Ned refocused his eyes and saw that the ground by the Darkling’s legs had erupted with great barbs of metal and ice. They’d shot up his body in an instant, forming a cocoon round it so complete, so complex and strong, that the air had been kicked from the creature’s lungs, and the gor-balin stood helpless and frozen in place. Further down the hill, other gor-balins had met the same fate, encased where they stood and with no hope of escape. Knowing that the battle was lost, the Demon and its Guardians retreated from sight and back into the forest.
Giddy, ecstatic and very slightly delirious, Lucy fell on Ned and hugged him.
“Ned, that was amazing!”
Ned paused to catch his breath.
“I, erm, I’m not sure that I know how I did that,” he finally managed.
“Told you we’d see them soon enough!” grinned Benissimo, as he came running back up the hill.
He inspected the cocoon-like prison that Ned had trapped the gor-balin assassin in with a whistle.
“Well, pup, whatever trouble you were having, it appears to have been fixed.”
Ned looked at the Ringmaster. The man had led both him and Mr Fox into the worst imaginable danger and it was only because Ned’s Amplification-Engine had for some unknown reason decided to work again that Lucy wasn’t dead.
Ned flexed his hand slowly and tried his ring again, just a small test to see if it still worked. The air around his ring shimmered feebly, before sputtering away to nothing. The next time they came across the butcher’s minions, both Engineer and Medic might not be so lucky.
“Benissimo, I think you and I need to talk.”
Brothers-in-arms
enissimo was not a man that felt uncomfortable, not even when fighting Demons or meeting with kings. Yet, as the door to the twin-bladed helicopter closed and the Russian taiga fell away, he looked decidedly less like himself and more like a man about to face a firing squad.
Th
at firing squad was Ned, and it was a one-man squad, Ned having asked the others to board one of the other transports and let him and the Ringmaster travel alone. George had looked utterly crestfallen, but Lucy gave Ned a knowing nod and boarded their Chinook in silence. Ned had gone so far as to ask his mouse to travel with Lucy, which the Debussy Mark Twelve was only too happy to do, having not seen her in months. Ned even ordered Gorrn to stay in his shadow and away from earshot.
“Bene, Lucy could have been killed!” Ned shouted.
Benissimo did not speak.
“We all could have been killed.”
The Ringmaster pursed his lips very slightly and thumbed at his top hat.
“Do you ever think about anything except your mission? Anything except your holy crusade against your brother?”
Benissimo stopped thumbing his hat and his moustache visibly sagged. For a minute Ned thought he’d gone too far, when the Ringmaster finally answered. “No.”
“I knew it. You don’t care about—”
“APOLLO’S FLAMING CHARIOT, PUP, WILL YOU LET ME SPEAK?!”
Bene was on his feet, his whip lashing at the seat like an angry snake, and Ned thought he was about to hit him. The man looked heartbroken or crazed, or somewhere in between. His great chest heaved and he exhaled before taking his seat again.
“I don’t care about anything else, Ned, because I do care about you, about Lucy, what’s left of the troupe, about every living thing, man or beast that my brother has harmed or intends to harm. You are and have always been my responsibility. Now, I said I’d explain and I will, but what I am about to tell you remains between us, Ned. Not even Kitty ever heard these words pass from my lips, though I think she had a sense of it.”
Ned quietened down. He’d never heard Benissimo talk like this before. Every word looked pained, as though just forming the letters in his mouth was a torture he couldn’t bear.
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