The Eye of Zoltar

Cavi homini

‘That’s kind of weird,’ said the Princess once we had driven a mile or two down the road in silence. We had dumped the trailer and freed the goats, so although still cramped in the jeep, we were at least a little faster.

‘What’s weird?’ I asked. ‘There’s a wide choice out here.’

‘The quantity of goats involved. Pugh the accountant said that Skybus Aeronautics gave them two thousand goats a month as payment for mining rights at Cadair Idris.’

‘What were they mining?’

The Princess shrugged.

‘He didn’t say. But because the contract was well drafted, they couldn’t convert the goats into something more usable. At least, not until now. I think the Goat Marketing Board will be a serious earner for the Mountain Silurians. It might even civilise them.’

‘You did say that peace would be brought about only through economic means,’ I observed.

‘I did, didn’t I?’

We reached the farthest extent of the wooded area a half-hour later, and Addie pulled into the shade of a large lime tree. We climbed out to consider our next move.

‘There’s at least a mile of open country to the base of the mountain,’ said Addie, peering at the landscape through binoculars, ‘and we must be cautious – a lot of people have vanished travelling this way.’

I looked up at the sheer grey mass of Cadair Idris, the top swathed in clouds, and saw, for the first time, that one side of the rocky pinnacle seemed to have the remnants of a stairway cut into the stone. The road upon which we were parked led to the mountain, then branched to where we could see that some buildings had been constructed beneath the almost vertical southern face. They seemed quite new, too. I nudged Perkins and pointed. He spelled himself a hand telescope again and stared for a moment at the distant buildings.

‘Several large buildings,’ he said, ‘and a barbed-wire perimeter with lots of people milling about. Looks like a manufacturing facility of some sort. The Skybus truck has just arrived and the gates are being opened to allow it to enter.’

‘Manufacturing?’ I said. ‘Out here?’

‘Looks like it. With a sizeable workforce, too, but they’re too far away to see details.’

‘Someone not subject to the hundred per cent fatality index, at any rate,’ I said.

‘Pugh the Numbers called them Cavi homini,’ said the Princess.

Addie laughed and I asked her what was so funny.

‘It’s like Cloud Leviathan graveyards and Sky Pirate Wolff and the Eye of Zoltar – myths. The Cavi homini are spooks, bogles, mysterious men without morals, or form. They take what they want, and nothing can kill them. It is said they are only empty walking clothes, with nothing inside. The translation from Latin is—’

‘Hollow Men,’ I said with a shiver.

‘Yes,’ said Addie with a frown. ‘You have these fairy stories in the Kingdom of Snodd as well?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘we’ve got them for real, as have you. We call them drones. They are used by …’

I stopped talking as several pieces of a large and very unseen jigsaw puzzle that was hovering above me locked into place. The Mighty Shandar used drones, owned a large share of Skybus Aeronautics, and here in the empty land near Cadair Idris, Hollow Men were manufacturing something for Skybus and then shipping it out in the trucks we had just seen.

‘Addie,’ I said, ‘just what did you see in the back of the Skybus truck?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, ‘it was completely empty.’

‘It couldn’t have been,’ I said. ‘They come in heavy and go out light – you said so yourself.’

‘I did say that, yes. The empty lorry I saw was one of the heavy ones being driven in.’

‘Then there’s less than nothing in the light ones going out?’

Addie shrugged.

‘I don’t get it,’ said the Princess.

‘Sometimes when magic and the Mighty Shandar are involved,’ I said, ‘it’s better not to know the truth.’

‘Jenny, I’ve found the half-track,’ said Perkins, who had focused his fingerscope on the side of the mountain where I had seen the stone steps.

‘And?’

‘The vehicle’s empty, but halfway to the top I can see a small figure – Curtis. I’d recognise that bandana anywhere. What do we do?’

‘Do what we planned and climb Cadair Idris,’ I said, ‘by way of the steps, preferably.’

‘And the Skybus facility and the Hollow Men?’ asked Addie.

I shrugged.

‘They’re what – two miles away? I say we worry about them if they start heading our way.’

So that’s what we decided to do. We got back in the jeep and headed off over the open land towards the mountain. I say ‘open land’ but that was true only in that there were no trees. The road rose and fell with the contours, and then tipped into a shallow ravine where the river crossed our path.

Addie slowed to a stop when we reached the river, and we looked around at the morbid sight that met our eyes. We didn’t speak for some moments.

‘Holy cow,’ said Perkins finally.

Addie switched off the engine and we climbed out. It was a medium-sized river, stony and fast moving and no more than a couple of feet deep. But it wasn’t the river that we had stopped to see, it was the bones. There were, quite literally, thousands of them. All human, and in places piled so thick that they had clogged the river and raised the water level. There were vehicles, too. Some overturned by winter floods, others corroded to nothing and a few that looked as though they had been there less than a year.

‘I’m thinking we’ve just discovered what happened to everyone who headed this way,’ said Addie, ‘ambushed and massacred.’

‘Do you think the Mountain Silurians aim to kill us anyway?’ asked Wilson. ‘That they aim to kill us anyway?’

‘After all my financial advice,’ said the Princess, ‘that would be a pretty dismal thing to do.’

Addie had approached the river and knelt down to inspect the bones.

‘It won’t be the Siluri,’ said Addie, ‘they’re honourable people, if a little violent and not very sophisticated.’

She held up a cleanly sliced ulna, then a lower jaw cleaved neatly sideways.

‘No, these are random wounds by a swiftly wielded long sword. These people were overcome not by skill, but by numbers.’

‘Drones,’ I said. ‘Hollow Men.’

We looked around nervously, but there was nothing – just the babbling of the brook, the gurgle of water through rocks.

‘Over here,’ said Wilson, who was standing next to a Land Rover half submerged in the river. The canvas top and seats had rotted, and the keys were still in the ignition. In the back were rain-stained sketchbooks full of illustrations of the Cloud Leviathan, and notebooks packed with notes, observations, discoveries.

‘A scientific expedition,’ said Wilson. ‘All that learning. For nothing.’

Addie drew her dagger and looked around. We were in a dip in the ground. It was a bad place to stop and a good place to attack, depending on your perspective.

‘These were all attacked returning,’ I said quietly. ‘Look at the direction in which the vehicles are pointing.’

Everyone looked. All the vehicles were headed towards the road we had just come in on. All these travellers had discovered secrets out here – Leviathans, Hollow Men, even something about Sky Pirate Wolff and possibly the Eye of Zoltar – but the secrets had stayed secrets; dead men and women tell no tales.

‘You were right, Addie,’ said Perkins, ‘there is a hidden menace waiting for us out here. But even Hollow Men have to come from somewhere – and the closest place is that facility. Even if they started to march right now, we’d still have half an hour or more to get away.’

‘I think not,’ said the Princess, who had moved away from the group and was staring at the ground near a small grassy hollow. ‘We’re surrounded.’

We joined her, and she pointed to four swords that were buried up to their hilts in the ground.

But it wasn’t the swords alone that worried us. Positioned around them were four neat stacks of clothes tied up with string. There were trousers, shirts, pairs of shoes, gloves and jackets, ties and hats. All identical, all carefully folded and waiting to be conjured into life to do their master’s bidding. Drones.

‘All these people were killed by a small drone army, eager and willing to do one thing and one thing only,’ I said. ‘To stop anyone returning from Cadair Idris.’

‘It would explain why Geraint the Great wanted my entire plan for the Goat Marketing Board up front,’ said the Princess. ‘He knew that people never return.’

‘But why?’ asked Perkins. ‘What’s the secret?’

‘I’m only guessing here,’ I said, ‘but perhaps the facility we saw is a manufacturing facility for hollow suits for the drones to wear. Perhaps the magic is in the weave.’

‘If that was so,’ said Addie, ‘the lorries would come out heavier than they go in, but they don’t, they’re lighter on the way out.’

‘And yet the lorry you saw coming in, the heavy one, was empty?’ said Perkins.

‘I know,’ said Addie, ‘it doesn’t make any sense.’

‘I’ve got a feeling it won’t just be about Cloud Leviathans and Sky Pirate Wolff,’ I said, ‘it will be about drones, the Mighty Shandar and Skybus Aeronautics.’

Perkins looked around at the scene of the massacre.

‘And I’ve a nasty feeling that our enlightenment may be short lived.’

‘You say the jolliest things,’ said Wilson, ‘but we’re not dead yet. Let’s get going.’