The Man with the Golden Torc

CHAPTER TWENTY Getting to the Heart of the Matter

"Uh-oh," said Molly as we reentered the labs.

I looked at her. "This isn’t going to be good news, is it?"

"The dragon charm just reappeared on my bracelet.

Which means someone in your family finally rubbed two brain cells together, realised a dragon that big couldn’t possibly be real, and worked a simple dispersion spell on it. My little diversion is now officially at an end."

"They’ll all head straight back into the Hall," I said, frowning. "To find out just what the dragon was diverting them from. So any minute now the whole place will be swarming with really pissed-off Droods looking for someone to take it out on…Time we were going, Molly. It was good to see you again, Uncle Jack."

"How far is it to the library?" said Molly, practical as always.

"Too far," said the Armourer. "You’re not even in the right wing."

"No problem," said Molly. "I’ll just call up a spatial portal, take us right there."

"No, you won’t," the Armourer said flatly. "The Hall’s inner defences don’t permit teleports, magical or scientific, for security reasons. Even I couldn’t produce anything powerful enough to break through the Hall’s defences." He broke off and scowled thoughtfully. "Not unless I can persuade the council to fund my black hole research after all…"

"If we could please stick to the subject," I said.

"There must be some way we can get to the library without being spotted," said Molly. "How about an illusion spell? I could whip up something simple, make us look like someone else. Or an aversion spell: make everyone look everywhere except at us."

"Wouldn’t work," I said, "Our torcs alerts us to that kind of spell automatically. They’d just fire up their Sight and look right through them."

"When in doubt, keep it simple," said the Armourer just a little smugly. He produced two battered old lab coats from a nearby locker and thrust them at us. "Put these on. Anyone you meet will look at the coats, not your faces. The family’s used to my lab assistants turning up everywhere and getting under their feet. Just keep your heads down and keep moving, and you’ll be fine. Damn, I’m good…"

Molly and I slipped the lab coats on. They were both covered with an assortment of quite appalling stains, not to mention rips, cuts, and, in my case, one really serious-looking bite mark. Molly’s came right down to her ankles, but I had enough sense not to smile.

"My coat smells funny," she said, glaring at me mutinously.

"Be grateful," I said. "Mine smells downright disgusting."

I turned to the Armourer, and we shook hands just a bit awkwardly. It wasn’t something we did, as a rule. But we both knew we might not get a chance to do it again.

"Good-bye, Eddie," the Armourer said, meeting my gaze squarely. "I wish…there was more I could do for you."

"You’ve already done far more than I had any right to expect," I said.

"Good-bye, Uncle Jack."

He smiled at Molly and shook her hand too. "I’m glad Eddie’s taste in women finally improved. It was a pleasure to meet you, Molly. Now get out there and give them all hell."

"Damn right," said Molly.

Molly and I left the Armoury and carefully shut the blast-proof doors behind us. No point in advertising that the Armoury had been left open to casual visitors. I couldn’t allow the Armourer to come to harm for helping me. I could already hear my family coursing through the outer sections of the Hall, searching for intruders. They were drawing steadily closer, shouting instructions and findings and comments back and forth in loud and excited voices. It sounded like the whole damned family had been mobilised. The Matriarch wasn’t taking any chances. The lab coats would get us past a few people, but not crowds like these…All it would take was a moment of recognition, one raised voice…

Fortunately, there was another option. Just not a very nice one.

"Back when I was a kid," I said conversationally to Molly as we hurried down an empty corridor, "I worked out various ways of getting around the Hall without being seen. Because if you got caught in places where you weren’t supposed to be, you got punished. Often severely punished. But luckily the Hall is very old, and down the years certain very useful hidden doors and secret passages became lost, forgotten, displaced. And because I did a lot of reading in the library, especially in sections I wasn’t supposed to have access to, I was able to turn up certain old books describing the exact locations of these very useful shortcuts.

"There are doors that can take you from one room to another, from one wing to another, without having to cross the intervening space. There are narrow passages within thick, hollow walls that used to be part of the old central heating and ventilation processes. There’s a trapdoor in the basement that opens out into the attic and some rooms that are only there on certain dates. I must have used them all, at one time or another, in my never-ending quest to discover things I wasn’t supposed to know about."

"Didn’t your family ever suspect?" said Molly.

"Oh, sure. Finding these old passages is a sort of rite of passage for young Droods; tacitly permitted, if not actually encouraged. The family likes to see initiative in its children. As long as they follow the accepted rules and traditions. But I found some very odd ways that no one else even dreamed existed, and I never told anyone. I needed something that was mine, back then, and not the family’s."

"Am I to take it that you know a shortcut to the library?" said Molly.

"Yes. There’s an opening into a crawl space within the wall not far from here."

"Then why didn’t you say so before?"

"Well," I said.

"There’s bad news, isn’t there? Somehow I just know there’s bad news."

"It’s dangerous," I said.

"How dangerous?"

"The crawl space is…inhabited. You see, the Hall has to put its electrical cables and gas pipes and so on somewhere out of sight, but for security purposes they can’t just be hidden away inside the walls; they have to be protected. Against sabotage and the like. So all our crawl spaces and hidden maintenance areas are located in attached pocket dimensions. Like the Armageddon Codex and the Lion’s Jaws, but on a much smaller and less dramatic scale. And a lot easier for people to get into, obviously. Anyway, some of these pocket dimensions have been around so long they’ve acquired their own inhabitants. Things that wandered in and…mutated. Or evolved."

"What exactly inhabits this particular crawl space?" said Molly.

"Spiders," I said unhappily. "Big spiders. And I mean really big spiders; things the size of your head! Plus a whole bunch of other really nasty creepy-crawly things that the spiders feed on."

"Spiders don’t bother me," said Molly. "That’s more a boy thing. It’s slugs that weird me out. And snails. Do you know how snails have sex?"

"These spiders will bother you," I said firmly, refusing to be sidetracked. "Hopefully they’re not actually as big and nasty as my childhood memories insist, because there’s no way of avoiding them. Their webs are everywhere. I still have nightmares, sometimes, about all the times they chased me through the crawl space…with their scuttling legs and glowing eyes…"

"Then why did you keep using that particular shortcut?" said Molly.

"Because I’ve never let anything stop me from doing what I need to do," I said. "Not even my own fear. Perhaps especially not that."

"And there’s no other way of getting to the library?"

"Not safely."

Molly sniffed. "You have a really weird idea of what’s safe and what’s not, Drood."

I led her down a shadowy side corridor, past a long row of tall standing vases from the third Ming dynasty and then past a glass display case full of exquisite Venetian glass, until I came to a wood-panelled wall that stretched away into the distance. I had to keep pulling Molly along, as she got distracted by so much wealth within easy snatching distance. I counted off the panels until I came to a particular carved wooden rose motif, and then I turned it carefully left and right the correct number of times until the primitive combination lock reluctantly fell into place. The rose clicked loudly, and a panel in the wall slid jerkily open. The ancient mechanism must be wearing out. Beyond the panel and inside the wall, there was only darkness.

The opening that had been more than ample for a child was only just big enough to let Molly and me squeeze through. We crouched down before the opening and peered into the darkness. A slow cold breeze came out of the dark, carrying a dry, dusty smell. Molly wrinkled her nose but said nothing. Thick strands of cobweb hung down inside the opening, swaying heavily on the breeze. There was no sign that anybody had been in the crawl space in years. I listened quietly, gesturing sharply for Molly to keep still when she fidgeted. I couldn’t hear anything. For the moment. I took a deep breath, braced myself, and then squeezed quickly through the cramped opening before I could change my mind. Molly followed me in, crowding right behind me, and the wooden panel slid jerkily back into place.

The darkness was absolute. Molly quickly conjured up a handful of her trademark witchfire, and the shimmering silver light showed us a narrow stone tunnel, the rough gray walls all but buried under accumulated layers of colour-coded wiring, cables, and copper and brass tubing. Thick mats of webbing crawled across the surface of both walls. I grimaced despite myself, even though I was careful not to touch or disturb any of it. Molly’s witchlight showed the tunnel stretching away before us, but if there was a ceiling, the light couldn’t reach high enough to find it. A thick streamer of webbing blew away from one wall, carried on the gusting breeze, and I flinched away from it.

"You big baby," said Molly, grinning broadly.

"Isn’t that a slug by your foot?" I said, and grinned as Molly made a loud eeking noise.

I led the way down the tunnel. Pride would allow no less. The floor was thick with undisturbed dust. Even the smallest sounds we made seemed to echo on forever; the only sounds in that endless eerie silence. The tunnel steadily widened until it seemed the size of a room, and then a hall, and then abruptly it widened out still farther until I could no longer tell how big a space we were moving in. I stuck close to the right-hand wall, its familiar man-made cables and piping a comfort to me. Until they became so thickly buried under webbing I could no longer see them clearly.

Molly boosted her witchlight as much as possible, but the light didn’t travel far. Beyond a certain point, the darkness just seemed to soak it up. There was a feeling of spae…stretching away, endlessly. We walked and walked, and the journey was just as bad as I remembered. Perhaps more so; I kept coming across suddenly familiar details that I hadn’t let myself remember. Like the hollow husks of really big insects and beetles scattered across the floor, their insides chewed out. And the thick strands of webbing that hung down from somewhere high above us, twitching and twisting even though the breeze was no longer blowing. I was amazed I’d found the courage to come this way back when I was just a kid. But thinking of the Sarjeant-at-Arms’s punishments had made it easy. I was far more scared of him than I ever was of giant spiders. Even though I was pretty sure he wouldn’t have actually killed me.

There were noises out in the dark. Scuttling, scurrying noises. Molly and I stopped short and looked around us. Molly held her handful of light up high, but it didn’t help. Soft wet sounds came from behind and up ahead, along with slow scraping sounds, like claws on stone.

"Okay," said Molly. "This is seriously creeping me out."

"Are you sure you can’t make any more light?" I said. "I don’t think they like the light."

"I’m giving it all I’ve got," snapped Molly, sounding just a bit strained.

"Something in this pocket dimension of yours doesn’t like light. It’s all I can do to maintain what I’ve got. How much farther to the library?"

"Still some way yet," I said. "If I’m remembering correctly. Follow me, hurry as much as you can, but don’t run. They chase anything that runs. I found that out the hard way."

We moved on, striding quickly through the dark. The webbing hanging down from above was getting thicker, heavier, like hanging curtains of dirty gauze. I ducked around them, careful not to let any of them touch me. They were all stirring restlessly now, twitching as though disturbed from a long sleep. And always there were the noises out in the dark, slowly but steadily closing in on us. Molly and I moved as quickly as we could without actually running. We were both breathing hard.

We almost ran straight into the massive web that blocked our way, its silver gray threads only showing up in the witchlight at the very last moment. It hung unsupported on the air before us, huge and intricate, radiating away beyond the limits of the witchlight. It would take a spider the size of a bus to spin a web that size. Or an awful lot of smaller spiders working together. I wasn’t sure which thought was the most disturbing. It very definitely hadn’t been here the last time I came this way.

"That…is a big web," said Molly. "Still, I’ve got some shears and you’ve got a bloody big stick. Do we smash our way through?"

"Can’t help feeling that’s a bad idea," I said. "But we don’t have any choice. We have to go on…"

"Look," said Molly. "If you’re really that worried, armour up."

"I can’t," I said. "The rules of reality work differently here. The armour won’t come. I found that out the hard way too."

"Now he tells me," said Molly. "Okay, it’s time to squeeze one out or get off the pot. We can’t go back, so…burn, baby, burn!"

She thrust her handful of witchfire into the nearest clump of threads, and they caught alight immediately, burning with a fierce blue light. The fires shot up and along the trembling threads, spreading quickly across the huge cobweb. And in this new, revealing light, Molly and I could at last see what it was that had been following us all this time. We were surrounded by an army of spiders, thousands of them, stretching away for as far as the light carried, and probably beyond. And they were all really big spiders. Black furry bodies the size of my head, many-jointed legs a yard or more long, clusters of eyes that glowed like precious jewels. And heavy mouth parts that clacked viciously together, drooling a thick saliva.

"Run," I said.

Molly and I burst through the burning remains of the web, slapping aside the entangling threads. The spiders came after us like a great black wave, silent except for the pattering of their many legs on the dusty stone floor. This close, I could smell them; a sour, bitter smell, like acid and spoiled meat. Something else I’d made myself forget, down the years…Molly and I sprinted through the dark, pushing ourselves as hard as we could. Horrid pain slammed through the whole of my left side with every step, forcing tortured sounds past my clenched teeth. So much tension and exercise must be spreading the strange matter farther through my system. I managed a small smile at the thought of the spiders behind me.

Hope I poison you, you bastards…

I could feel myself slowing. Molly was leaving me behind as she kept up a pace I could no longer match. I could have called out to her, but I didn’t. One of us had to get out. She looked back anyway, realised she was getting too far ahead, and dropped back to grab me by the arm and urge me on. Thank God she grabbed my good arm. A spider came sailing through the air towards me on the end of a long streamer of webbing, like a big black hairy balloon. I lashed out with Oath Breaker, and the heavy ironwood stick struck the giant spider right among its eyes. The body exploded in a wet splatter of flying innards. More spiders came sailing out of the darkness. I struck about me with Oath Breaker, killing everything I hit. Molly threw handfuls of witchfire this way and that, and burning spider bodies fell out of the air.

We ran on, not as swiftly as before, our feet squelching heavily through pulped spider remains on the floor, sometimes still shuddering and twitching. The spiders were swarming close behind us now, almost on our heels. I thought longingly about the Colt Repeater in its shoulder holster, but in the time it would take me to stop and wrestle the gun out of the holster, the spiders would be all over me. So I just kept going, fighting for breath now, crying out at the pain within me, lashing increasingly wildly about me with Oath Breaker, which seemed to grow heavier with every blow.

The exit from the crawl space wasn’t far now, I was sure. I was almost sure.

We slowed still more, exhausted by the long day, and the spiders caught up and swarmed all over us, clawing and biting. Molly and I stumbled on, crying out in pain and shock and disgust. I pulped their soft squishy bodies with my bare hands, thrusting Oath Breaker through my belt. Molly brushed the spiders away with her handful of witchfire, and the burning bodies fell away from her to skitter madly back and forth on the floor, blazing brightly in the dark. But there were always more climbing all over us, dropping out of the air. Both Molly and I were yelling out loud now as we beat the things away. More scurried around our moving feet, darting up our legs or trying to trip us, but they were too light and flimsy, for all their size. We crushed them underfoot and stumbled on.

Until finally I saw, in the flickering witchlight, a familiar sight up ahead. The exit panel for the crawl space, leading back into the Hall. Into light and warmth and sanity. I could see it up ahead, light from outside shining brightly past its edges, clear as day in the endless crawl space dark.

I pointed it out to Molly, and we found a few last vestiges of strength to hurry us on. The panel slid jerkily open as we approached, activated by our presence, and then stuck halfway just long enough to scare me with the thought that the ancient mechanism had broken down. And then it started moving again, spilling painfully bright light into the darkness.

I pushed Molly through the narrow gap and squeezed myself through right behind her. I spun around and twisted the carved wooden rose on the wall, and the panel closed itself with a series of heavy, slow jerks. One last giant spider forced its way through after us, rearing up, only to collapse and die on the floor, its long multijointed legs scrabbling weakly. The oversized thing couldn’t exist in our reality. The spiders that still clung to Molly and me slowly fell away, also dying. They scuttled weakly across the waxed and polished floor, trying to get back to the safety of the dark, but Molly and I stamped on them, pulping them under our feet. They would have died anyway, but we needed to kill them.

Even dead, some of the spiders still clung to Molly and me, their clawed and barbed legs embedded in our torn and bloody clothing and in our flesh. Molly and I took turns to pull the nasty things off each other, flinching at every touch, until it was over. We were both dead tired, breathing so harshly it hurt, our hearts pounding in our chests, bloodied and hurting from a hundred cuts and bites. We stumbled away from the dead spiders, and then just held each other tightly, shuddering and shaking and making quiet shocked noises. We clung to each other like children newly wakened from a bad dream, and it would have been hard to say who was comforting whom. Finally we let go and stood back. Too embarrassed to look at each other for a while, partly because neither of us were used to being weak, but mostly because of the unexpected depth of our emotions.

"All right," said Molly, her voice nearly back to normal. "I admit it; those were really big spiders."

"Persistent little bastards, weren’t they?" I said, trying for a light touch and only just missing it.

"You’re hurt," said Molly.

"So are you."

Somehow she found the strength for a quick healing spell, just enough to heal our bites and close over the scratches. I can’t say it made me feel any better, but I acted as though it did. She didn’t need to know about the spreading pains in my left side. Three days, maybe four? I didn’t think so.

"I know where we are," I said. "The library’s only a few minutes away."

"Then let’s go," said Molly. "But this library of yours had better be worth the trip, Drood."

I had to smile.

We trotted down the corridor, glad to be back in our own comfortable world again. The light was clear and warm, and the Hall was full of human sights and scents. For the first time in a long time, I was glad to be home. It felt as though I’d spent years in the crawl space dark. How did I ever stand it as a child? Maybe it was I could run faster back then.

Molly and I rounded a corner, and half a dozen members of my family came strolling down the corridor towards us, chattering animatedly about the false dragon’s attack. All kinds of names came up as possible suspects, but none of them so much as mentioned me. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or insulted. They glanced briefly in our direction, and then just as the Armourer said, they looked away again the moment they took in our lab coats. Just to be on the safe side, I’d already buried my face in my hands, as though I’d been injured. Molly caught on immediately and half supported me as we passed the other Droods.

"It’s your own fault!" she said loudly. "I’ve no sympathy for you. How can anyone mistake gunpowder for snuff?"

"My nose," I moaned. "Did anyone find my nose?"

The other Droods laughed briefly and kept going. Just another lab mishap, nothing to see, keep moving. Molly and I kept up the act until we were safely around the next corner, and there was the library, right before us. No one else was around. I tried the doors, but they were locked, as expected. Still no one standing guard, though. Everyone must have run outside to get a look at the dragon. Very sloppy security, entirely unprofessional and bad discipline. What was the family coming to? No doubt the Sarjeant-at-Arms would have a thing or two to say, when he finally woke up. I used the key the Armourer gave me, and the doors swung open at a touch. I ushered Molly in and quickly closed and locked the doors behind us. I didn’t want to be disturbed. I didn’t know how long this was going to take.

The library appeared to be completely deserted. I called out a few times, and no one emerged from the towering stacks to hush me. Molly stared about her, gaping openly. I nodded, understanding. The sheer size of the library always hit new visitors hard.

"Welcome to the Drood family library," I said just a bit grandly. "No shouting, no running between the stacks, no peeing in the shallow end. And no, it isn’t as big as it looks; it’s bigger. Takes up the whole lower floor of this wing. The whole world is in here, somewhere. If you can find it."

"It’s…huge," Molly said finally. "How do you find anything in here?"

"Mostly we don’t," I had to admit. "William was the last librarian to try and put together an official index, and most of his papers disappeared with him. We’re always adding books, losing books, and misfiling them. At least the sections are clearly marked."

"You look for family history," said Molly, pulling herself together and putting on her most efficient manner. "I’m going to work my way through the medical section. There must be something here I can use to help you. Even if it’s just to slow down the progress of the strange matter till we can get you to someone who can help you."

"Molly…"

"No, Eddie. I don’t want to hear it. I’m not giving up, and neither should you. I won’t let you die. Not when you risked your life to save me. I can’t…There has to be someone out there who can put you right! Hell, if all else fails, I know half a dozen people who can bring you back from the dead as a zombie."

"Thanks for the thought," I said. "Medical section is down there; twenty stacks along, third right, then follow the—"

"Oh, hell," said Molly. "I never was any good at directions. I’d better use a locator spell, or we’ll be here all night." She pulled a pendulum on a silver wire out of a hidden pocket and set it spinning. The pendulum slammed to a halt pointing right at me. Molly frowned. "That’s…interesting. It’s reading a power source on you, and it’s not Oath Breaker. In fact, I’m picking up quite a lot of undischarged magic still attached to the key the Armourer gave you."

She put the pendulum away as I pulled out the key and looked at it. The Armourer had made a point of giving me the key, even though he had to know I could just armour up and kick the doors in. Was the key a clue of some kind? To some secret he couldn’t quite bring himself to say in person? I studied the key with my Sight, and there was a second spell written on it so clearly even I could tell what it was. A spell to work a hidden lock, to open a hidden door. Here, in the library? There’d never been even a whisper about a secret door in the library…

I turned the key back and forth, and the spell flared up briefly when it pointed in one particular direction. I followed the key through the stacks, Molly trotting along at my side. Until finally we came to the old portrait on the southwest wall.

It was the only painting in the library. A huge piece, a good eight feet tall and five feet wide, contained in a solid steel frame. It was centuries old, older than the Hall itself, some said; artist unknown. The portrait depicted another library whose many shelves were packed with massive leather-bound volumes and parchment scrolls tied with colourful ribbons. There were no people in the painting, no symbolic objects, no obvious arrangement of important items. No meaning, no message; just the old library. Molly and I stood before the painting, considering it.

"I’m no expert," said Molly, "But that…is a seriously boring painting. Is it significant to the family?"

"Sort of," I said. "This portrait shows the old library, the original repository of Drood knowledge. In this first library was held all the early history of the Droods, perhaps even knowledge of our true beginnings, long lost to us. You see, the old library was destroyed in a fire set by our enemies. One of our greatest tragedies. The whole house burned down with the library, which is why the family moved here, in the time of King Henry V. This portrait is all that remains from that time, to remind us of what we lost."

"There’s something weird about this painting," Molly said slowly. "I can feel magic in it. In the frame and the canvas, in the paint and the very brushstrokes. Can you feel it?"

I studied the painting closely with my Sight, holding the key tightly in my hand, and the whole portrait seemed to blaze with an inner light. And finally I noticed something I’d never seen before. There was a small, carefully disguised keyhole in the silver frame, hidden in some ornate scrollwork. I pointed it out to Molly, and then slowly eased the Armourer’s key into the hole. It fit perfectly. I turned the key, and just like that the whole portrait came alive. I wasn’t looking at a painting anymore but a scene from life, an opening into another place. A doorway into the old library. I took Molly by the hand, and together we stepped through.

The old library wasn’t lost, wasn’t gone, just hidden in plain sight. Hanging in front of all our eyes, for all these years. The old library, real and intact, all its ancient history and knowledge preserved after all. (Preserved for whom? No. Think about that later.) I stood very still just inside the doorway, looking about me. The old library stretched away in every direction, endless towering stacks and shelves packed with books and manuscripts and scrolls for as far as the eye could see. I looked behind me, and beyond the open space of the doorway I could see more stacks, more shelves.

I walked slowly forward down the aisle before me, almost numb with shock. The greatest tragedy in my family’s history was a lie. I shouldn’t have been surprised, after everything else I’d learned, but to deliberately conceal so much knowledge, so much wisdom…was a sin almost beyond understanding. I took down some of the oversized books, handling them very carefully, and opened them. The leather bindings creaked noisily, and the pages seemed to exhale dust and ancient smells. They were handwritten, illuminated manuscripts, the kind monks laboured over for years. Latin mostly, some ancient Greek. Other tongues, equally old or obscure. There were palimpsests and parchments and piles of scrolls, some so delicate looking I didn’t want even to breathe too heavily near them.

"There’s some kind of magic suppressor field operating in here," Molly said suddenly. "I can feel it."

"I’m not surprised," I said absently, absorbed in a scroll concerning King Harold and the Soul of Albion. "Must be a security measure, to protect the contents."

"I could probably force through a few small magics, if necessary," said Molly. "If we have to defend ourselves."

"Will you relax?" I said. "We’re the only ones in here."

I rolled the scroll up again, retied the ribbon, and carefully put in back in its place. The answer to my earlier thought was clear. The only people who could have hidden the old library like this…were the inner circle of the Droods. The Matriarch, her council, and her favourites. Our history and true beginnings weren’t lost, weren’t destroyed; they were deliberately hidden away from the rest of us for the benefit of the chosen few. But what could be here that was so important, so dangerous, that it had to be hidden away? That they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, share with the rest of us? I moved on through the stacks, opening books and scrolls at random, almost drunk on the prospect of so many answers to so many questions, and all mine for the taking. (Maybe that’s why they kept it just for themselves…so they could feel like this.) As I moved deeper into the stacks, I discovered histories written in languages no one had used for centuries; works put down on parchment and tanned hide by the Saxons, the Celts, the Angles and the Danes and the Norse. And other tongues so old nobody had spoken them aloud in centuries.

"All this was here," I said finally. "And I never knew it. My family’s true heritage, stolen away from us by those we were always taught to trust and revere. This should have been made freely available to all of us. We have a right to know where we came from! Who our ancestors were, what they did, and why they did it. It makes me wonder what other secrets the inner circle have been hiding from the rest of us; from the rank and file and all the good little soldiers who went out to fight and die for the honour of the family…We’ve reached the end of the trail, Molly. The answer is here; I know it."

"The answer?" Molly said carefully. "Which particular answer is that, Eddie?"

"To how it all started! Where we came from. Where the armour came from. How we became Droods." I looked at Molly. "I did wonder, sometimes, if maybe my ancestors made some kind of deal with the Devil."

"No," Molly said immediately. "If that was the case, I would have known."

I decided I wouldn’t ask. This was no time to get distracted. I looked around, using my Sight. A complex latticework of protective spells lay over everything, some of them quite impressively strong. And nasty. Some books and scrolls shone brightly on their shelves, radiating strange energies. And one blazed like a beacon, full of ancient power. It turned out to be a simple scroll, words inked on roughly tanned animal hide. The outer markings were in a language I didn’t even recognise. Molly crowded in close beside me.

"Any idea what that is?"

"The answer," I said.

"Well, yes, but apart from that…"

"Only one way to find out," I said, and touched the wax seals holding the scroll closed with Oath Breaker. The activating Words just popped into my mind from the old ironwood staff itself, and as I said them, one by one, the protections around the scroll shattered and disappeared. I unrolled it very carefully, and the dark ink on the interior stood out clearly against the coffee-coloured hide. The text was Druidic, from Roman times. Which was unusual in itself, because Druidic learning was strictly an oral tradition, passed down mouth to mouth from generation to generation. Never written down, in case it might fall into the hands of enemies. But they’d made an exception for this; and I could see why.

"It’s Latin," said Molly, peering curiously over my shoulder. "Strange dialect. Something about a bargain."

"You read Latin?" I said, unable to keep the surprise out of my voice.

She glared at me. "I may not have had the benefits of your private education, but I know a thing or two. You can’t work any of the major magics without at least a working knowledge of Latin. Most of the old pacts and bindings are written in it. What we’re looking at here…is a spell. A spell to reveal hidden truths…about the beginnings of the Drood family! You were right, Eddie; it is the answer. So, do we use the spell? Right here and now?"

"Of course," I said. "We might not get another chance."

"Is this something you need to do alone?" said Molly. "I mean, I’d understand if you—"

"No," I said immediately. "We’ve come this far together; it’s only right we go the last mile together too."

So we both spoke the spell in unison, chanting the ancient Latin aloud, and the world we knew blew away on a wave of wild magic, as the spell gave us a vision of time past.

We were not there. We saw and heard everything, but we were not present. This was the past, and we had no place in it, except as observers.

Before us lay old Britain. The Romans called it the Tin Islands, because that was all we had that interested them. The land of the Britons: a savage place, back when we all lived in the forest, in the wild woods, in the dark places the Romans dared not follow us. The vision shifted and changed, showing us sights charged with meaning and significance. We watched, and learned.

In this time, Drood history began. Fierce men in ragged furs, with blue woad daubed on their snarling faces, ran howling through the trees. My ancestors, the Druids. So fierce, so savage, they shocked even the hardened Roman legionnaires. They fought; tribes against armies, bronze against steel. And yet at first the Druids won, forcing the invading Romans all the way back to their waiting ships, and then slaughtering them in the shallows until it seemed the whole ocean ran red with their blood. The survivors sailed away; but they came back. The Romans came again, and again, until finally they triumphed through steel and tactics and weight of numbers. Because they were an army, and we were just scattered tribes who often hated each other as much as we did the invaders.

The Romans feared the Druid priests most of all, and wiped them out, destroying their spoken knowledge and traditions along with their savage religion. And so it might have gone…until the Heart came, and everything changed.

It did not fall from the sky, as the official story says. It did not fall like an angel from heaven, or a meteor from outer space. It downloaded itself from another dimension, a different kind of reality. Imposing itself upon our world through an act of sheer will. The impact of its arrival killed every living thing in the vicinity and flattened all the trees for miles around. The ground shook for days, and strange bright lights and energies burned in the skies. But the Druids, though sensibly cautious, were scared of nothing and sent emissaries to the Heart.

Those Druids would become the very first Droods.

They walked among fallen trees for mile after mile, and though they saw wonders and horrors and living things twisted and mutated by the terrible energies released through the Heart’s arrival, they did not stop or turn aside. They were shamans whose job it was to defend and protect the tribe from outside threats. And finally they came to the great clearing of dead and blasted earth in which the Heart lay. A diamond as big as a hill, brilliant and beautiful; and alive. It spoke to the Druid shamans who came to it, and they worshipped it as a sign from the gods or perhaps even one of the gods themselves.

The Heart was quite content for them to do this. It was lost and far from home and weakened by its long journey. It had come to our world fleeing something else. Something the Heart was still very much afraid of. So it proposed a bargain to the Druid shamans. It would make them powerful, make them as gods among their own kind, and in return they would revere and protect the Heart against all enemies. In this world…and without.

The Heart gave the Druids their living armour, and they became more than men.

Originally, the shamans only used the armour to protect the tribes against the dark powers and forces of evil who walked more openly in the world in those days. But the armour made these Droods very powerful, and all power tends to corrupt…The greatest threat to the tribes were the invading Romans, but the shamans were wise enough to know that not even the golden armour could hold off the Roman armies forever. So they went to the Romans and made a deal. Rome would rule…through the Droods. And thus the tribes would be protected from the worst of Rome’s power. When, five centuries later, the Roman Empire finally declined and fell, and Roman authority left Britain, the Droods just kept going. Operating secretly, to protect the tribes from all threats, from without…and within.

But what was the armour, this glorious golden living metal? Where did it come from? And what price did the Heart demand to make those first few Droods so much more than human?

A Drood stood before the Heart, presenting a pair of twin babies to the massive diamond. One of the babies was snatched out of the Drood’s arms by an unseen force, and it hung on the air before the Heart, kicking and screaming. And then it was suddenly sucked into the Heart’s shining surface and disappeared inside. Its screams cut off abruptly. And around the neck of the baby still held by the Drood, a shining golden collar appeared. The vision showed other sacrifices, other sights, down many years, until the secret of the family’s armour was plain.

All the Druids exposed to the energies of the Heart underwent predetermined genetic changes, and from that point on all Drood children were born as identical twins. Soon after birth, one child was given to the Heart, which absorbed its body and its soul, so that the surviving twin might wear the golden armour and serve the family. When I wore the living metal, I was surrounding myself with all that was left of my sacrificed twin. The brother I never knew. Every time I armoured up, I was wearing my brother like a second skin.

How many twins, how many lives, had been sacrificed to the Heart, down the long centuries? How many innocent children denied their chance at life, so the Droods could be more than human?

The vision showed us more. It got worse.

As more and more babies were given to the Heart, the other-dimensional being grew brighter, stronger. The souls of the sacrificed children were held and sealed within the Heart, trapped there to generate the power that created our armour, that powered our magics and our sciences, that made our family strong.

I felt sick. Soiled. I had been brought up to revere and protect the Heart in its Sanctity, without ever knowing what it really was. An eater of souls. Just like those disgusting entities the Loathly Ones, but on a far greater scale. All those babies…all those generations of trapped souls, denied an afterlife, condemned to never-ending existence within the Heart, to make it powerful. Did they know? Were they aware in there? Did they suffer endlessly? Were they screaming all the time, behind the gleaming facets of that massive diamond?

The vision ended, and Molly and I fell back into our bodies. We both looked at each other, shocked speechless. I’d never felt so angry in my life. I rolled the scroll up very carefully, retied the ribbons, and set it back on its shelf. I couldn’t risk it being damaged. It was evidence of a crime. My anger burned cold within me, and I had never felt so focused, so determined. Molly reached out to me, and then stopped at the last moment. As though I might have burned her fingers. I don’t think she liked what she saw in my face, in my eyes.

"Eddie…"

"It’s all right," I said, though something in my voice made her flinch.

"I’ve always known my family was rotten to the heart."

I didn’t hear anything, didn’t see anything, but suddenly I just knew that he was there, standing behind me. And since I’m not at all easy to sneak up on, I knew who it was, who it had to be. I turned slowly, and there he was, with a gun pointed at me. Molly turned too, and then instinctively moved a little closer to me. The Matriarch had sent the greatest field agent of all to deal with me.

"Hello, Uncle James," I said.

He nodded, not smiling, tall and dark and handsome as ever, splendidly elegant in a formal tuxedo, the gun seeming almost out of place in his hand, as it covered Molly and me. He might have just come from a cocktail party or an ambassador’s ball. Some important occasion, where the high and the mighty gathered to discuss all the matters that mattered. Uncle James was always at home in the very best circles, when he wasn’t chasing the scum of the earth through backstreet bars or hidden lairs, the Amazonian rain forests, or the darkest canyons of the urban jungle.

"Hello, Eddie," he said, and his voice didn’t sound at all strained.

"You never would do what you were told, even as a child. I told you not to come back here. Told you I’d have to kill you if we ever met again. And yet here you are, and here I am. So…Aren’t you at least going to introduce me to your young lady?"

"Heavens," I said. "Of course; what was I thinking? Uncle James, this is Molly Metcalf, the witch of the wild woods. Molly, this is my uncle James. Better known in disreputable circles as the Gray Fox."

"Really?" said Molly, looking actually impressed for the first time since I’d met her. "The Gray Fox? Damn! Eddie, you never told me the legendary Gray Fox was your uncle! It’s an honour to meet you, sir. Really. I’ve followed your career for years, from a distance of course. You took on the Unholy Inspectres, the Bloody Beast of Bodmin Moor, and the Murder Mystics—"

"Not that last one," Uncle James said graciously. "My brother Jack took down the Murder Mystics. He never did get the renown he deserved."

"You have a gun," I said. "You could have shot me in the back the moment you walked in here, before I even knew you’d found me. It would have been the sensible thing to do, before I could armour up."

"Yes," he said easily. "I could have killed you and your young lady, but I didn’t. I needed to talk to you first, Eddie. I know you’ve opened the scroll, said the Words, seen the vision. When you broke the seals, that set off a silent alarm, and we all knew it had to be you. So I said I’d come down here and take care of things. How did you break the seal, Eddie?"

"I have Oath Breaker," I said, and showed him the ironwood staff.

"So you do. You’ve been to see Jack, haven’t you? Of course you have. He always was the softhearted one. I shall have to have words with him later. Put the staff down on the floor, Eddie. Very carefully."

I crouched down, laid the stick on the floor, and then straightened up again, never once taking my eyes off Uncle James.

"Who sent you?" I said. "The council, or the Matriarch? How deep does the rot go?"

"The council and the Matriarch," said Uncle James. "You’ve pissed off pretty much everybody, Eddie."

"Do you know the secret of the scroll?" I said. "The truth behind the armour, and the Heart?"

"Of course I know. It’s the first thing they tell you when you join the council."

I raised an eyebrow. "I wasn’t aware field agents were allowed to serve on the council."

"Exceptions are made, for exceptional people," said James. He wasn’t boasting, just stating a fact.

"What did you do?" I said. "When you found out about all the children who’ve been sacrificed so we could become what we are?"

"Oh, I was shocked," said Uncle James. "Horrified. But I got over it. Just as you will, in time. The original bargain was made in a simpler, more savage time, by savage people. But the family has become too important, too necessary to risk undoing the bargain. We don’t just protect the tribe anymore; we protect humanity. We have a duty, a responsibility, to stand between them and the forces of darkness that they must never know about. And the secret…is just part of the burden we have to bear so we can do the things that have to be done."

"Like ruling the world from behind the scenes?" said Molly. "Like stamping down hard on anyone or anything that doesn’t fit your narrow criteria of what’s acceptable?"

"Getting upset won’t change anything," said Uncle James, still looking only at me. "It won’t bring back your twin brother, or mine. They died so we could wear the armour, so we could be a force for good in a world that needs us now more than ever. We can’t tell everyone in the family, Eddie; you must know that. Most of them have no idea what it’s like out in the world. They wouldn’t understand…how necessary some things can be. That’s why only the Matriarch and the council know: those of us who’ve proven our worth through long service to the family. And to the world. We bear the burden of the truth so others don’t have to. So we can go on saving the world every day."

"That’s it?" I said. "The end justifies the means? Come on, Uncle James; you can do better than that."

"I insisted they send me down here," Uncle James said urgently. "Because I’m the only one who wouldn’t shoot you on sight. I needed to talk to you, Eddie, make you understand. I don’t want to have to kill you, Eddie. Not when you could still do so much for the family. You have so much potential…and you remind me so much of your mother."

"Don’t go there," I said, and I could hear how cold my voice was.

He didn’t flinch. "My sister was one of the best field agents of her generation," said Uncle James. "Only makes sense that her son would be special too. I raised you, Eddie. Taught you everything I knew. I always saw you…as the son I never had."

"You raised me to know right from wrong," I said. "To fight evil wherever I found it. That’s what I’m doing, Uncle James."

"We keep the world safe," Uncle James said almost pleadingly. "We protect humanity from all the forces that would destroy them if we weren’t there."

"You are one of the forces that would destroy us," said Molly.

Uncle James still ignored her, concentrating only on me. "Someone has to be in charge, Eddie. You can’t trust politicians to do what’s right, not when it’s always so much easier to do what’s expedient. Do you have any idea how many wars we’ve prevented, down the centuries, by working behind the scenes? How many world wars that never happened thanks to us? There have been times when the family was all that stood between humanity and utter extinction. Our record may not be perfect, but the world would have been a far worse place without us."

"You don’t know that," said Molly. "Not for sure. Who can say what kind of a world we might have made for ourselves if we’d been forced to make our own mistakes and learn from them?"

"We’ve been a force for good," said Uncle James, holding my gaze with his.

"Yes," I said. "On the whole, I believe we have. But the price…is too high. You can’t be just a little bit corrupt, Uncle James. Maybe that’s why we went from serving and protecting the world to running it."

"Please," he said. "Surrender. Don’t make me kill you, Eddie. We can still work this out. It’s not too late. I’ll speak for you before the council. Your grandmother isn’t a monster, Eddie. If she can find a way to save you, she will. You know she will."

"I can’t let this go on," I said. "Not now that I know. I’m here to set the world free, Uncle James. To tear off all their shackles and let them run free. We were meant to be the world’s shepherds, not their jailors. We’ve become the very thing we were raised to fight. The family must fall for what it’s done to the world, and to itself; and to me. No more lies, Uncle James. No more dead babies. No more Droods walking around unknowing in the living skins of their murdered twins. This should be just between you and me, Uncle James. Will you let Molly go? If she agreed to just walk away?"

"I’m sorry," he said, and he sounded as though he meant it. "You know I can’t let her leave, Eddie. Not now that she knows the secret. If she stands with you, she dies with you. But…if you were to come back into the family, perhaps something could be arranged…As your wife, she’d be family too."

"Wait just a minute!" said Molly.

"Be quiet, child," said Uncle James. "I’m trying to save your life. The two of you could never leave the Hall again, Eddie, but you could still live long, useful, productive lives here."

"Serving the family," I said.

"Yes."

"Work for the Droods?" said Molly. "Screw that shit. I’d rather die. No offence, Eddie."

"I have to do what’s right," I said. "I have to fight evil wherever I find it. Just like you taught me, Uncle James."

"Eddie…" he said, taking a step forward.

"I’m sorry."

"So am I." Uncle James sighed heavily, but his voice was calm and his eyes were so cold as to seem almost disinterested. "Don’t bother armouring up, Eddie. This gun came from the Armourer, long ago. He made me some special armour-piercing bullets out of strange matter. They’ll punch right through your armour. Just like the arrow on the motorway."

"You knew about the ambush all along!" I said, almost surprised to find I could still feel shocked after so many secrets. "Did you know the arrow would leave some of itself in my body, poisoning me, killing me by inches?"

"No!" Uncle James said quickly. "It was supposed to be a clean kill. They promised me it would be quick, or I would never have agreed. You weren’t supposed to suffer…You were supposed to die valiantly on the motorway, facing the family’s fiercest enemies. It seems…I taught you better than I realised. I am proud of you, Eddie. And I promise it will be a clean kill this time. For you and your young lady."

"Like hell," said Molly.

All the time Uncle James had been talking so passionately, concentrating all his attention on me, I’d been quietly aware of Molly subvocalising Words of power, a trick she’d learned from me, struggling to raise just enough power to force one good spell through the security measures suppressing magic in the old library. And now the spell activated, opening one small spatial portal right beside Uncle James’s hand. It sucked the gun right out of his grasp and started to pull his arm in too before the security measures reasserted themselves and shut the portal down. It snapped out of existence, and Molly almost collapsed, exhausted by the strain. She grabbed at a heavy book stack to support herself and grinned at me.

"There you go, Eddie! Level playing field. Now kick his self-righteous, hypocritical arse!"

Uncle James looked at his empty gun hand as though he couldn’t quite believe it, and then he looked at me. I smiled, and suddenly so did he. That old familiar devil-take-the-hindmost grin.

"All right, Eddie. Let’s do it. Show me how much you’ve learned."

"You always were a big drama queen, Uncle James," I said.

We armoured up, the living golden metal enclosing both of us in a moment. The terrible pain in my left side was immediately muted, and I didn’t realise how bad it had got until it wasn’t there anymore. The golden armour made me strong and powerful again. My dead brother made me strong…but I couldn’t think about that now. I had to concentrate everything I had on Uncle James, or he would kill me. He was, after all, the most proficient and deadly field agent the family had ever produced.

But he’d never had to face someone like me. A semi-rogue who’d learned all his best tricks outside the family. Tempered in the fires of two appalling days, made stronger than ever before by what I’d had to do to survive. And Uncle James didn’t have my outrage, my anger, my righteous cause. No; he’d never met a Drood like me.

We circled each other slowly, warily, gleaming golden and glorious in the muted light of the old library. I didn’t know what weapons he might have under his armour, but the odds were he wouldn’t dare use them, for fear of damaging the old library. Just a few sparks in the wrong place could cause a terrible fire…And all I had left was the Colt Repeater, its everyday bullets useless against his armour. So it all came down to him and me, one to one, man to man.

I grew heavy spikes on the knuckles of my golden hands. Uncle James grew long slender blades out of his golden hands. The edges looked very sharp. I’d never known a Drood who could do that with his armour before, but the Gray Fox always was the best of us. Champion of a thousand undisputed victories against the forces of evil. He knew tricks no one else did, learned the hard way in thirty years of fighting in dirty secret wars. Deep down…I knew I couldn’t beat him. But I had to try. If only to buy Molly a chance to escape and take the truth with her. Uncle James stood between us and the only exit, the painting’s frame that led back into the main library. So I had to drive him back, drive him away, fight him to a standstill; die on my feet if that was what it took to buy Molly her chance.

My one advantage over the Gray Fox: I was already dying. So I had nothing to lose.

I surged forward, driven by all the supernatural strength and speed my armour could produce, and still Uncle James was ready for me. He sidestepped gracefully, and his right-hand sword came sweeping around, the supernaturally sharp edge slicing right through the armour over my right side. My armour healed itself immediately, closing the cut, but I wasn’t so lucky. Pain flared across my ribs, and I could feel thick blood coursing down my right side under my armour. I’d never felt that before. I charged Uncle James again and again, knowing my only hope was to get in close and grapple with him, and every time he avoided me like a toreador with a bull, his impossibly sharp blades cutting through my golden armour again and again, cutting me, hurting me, slowing me down through accumulated shock and blood loss. The Gray Fox circled me, staying carefully out of my reach, watching for the first sign of weakness so he could move in for the kill.

So I gave him a sign. I pretended to stumble, almost going down on one knee, and he came gliding in for the kill, smooth as any dancer. Only to find me waiting for him. I lunged forward, forcing him backwards, off balance. He quickly got his feet back under him again and straightened up, but by that time I had both my hands around his throat, my golden fingers pressing down on his golden throat. I concentrated and grew sharp barbs on the insides of my fingers, digging them deep into the living metal around his neck. And Uncle James couldn’t grab my wrists to force my hands away without giving up his swords.

He drew back his right arm and slammed his right sword forward with all his armour’s strength behind it. The golden blade punched right through the armour over my left side, through me, and out my back. The pain was horrific. I cried out, and there was blood in my mouth. It coursed down my chin, under my golden mask. I almost passed out. I probably would have if I hadn’t been so angry.

I clung onto his throat with both hands, searching desperately for some last trick I could use against him; and that was when I remembered how I’d once fused both my golden hands together to contain and seal off Archie Leech’s Kandarian amulet. If I could fuse my armour together, why not mine and Uncle James’s? Just for a moment. Just long enough to do what I had to do. I concentrated, focusing all my willpower, sweat running down my face under my mask, and the living metal around his throat yielded to my greater will, my greater fury. His armour fused with mine, and suddenly my bare hands were around his bare throat, and I bore down hard.

He struggled fiercely, not understanding what was happening, throwing me this way and that by sheer brute strength, but I wouldn’t let go. He pulled his right hand back, jerking the sword blade out of me, and I cried out again as I felt things break and tear within me, but still I wouldn’t let go. Not even when he ran me through again, and again, sinking the blade deep in my guts and twisting it back and forth.

He was weakening fast, but so was I, and God alone knows what might have happened if not for Molly.

We’d been so caught up in ourselves, fighting face to golden face, that we’d both lost track of Molly Metcalf. She came up behind Uncle James in his blind spot, and she had Torc Cutter in her hands. She jammed the ugly shears up against the back of his neck, yelled the activating Words, and cut through his golden armour, right where his collar should be. Uncle James screamed once, like a soul newly damned to Hell, and then his armour disappeared all in a moment, and his whole body went limp in my hands. It took me a moment to realise what had happened, and a moment more to armour down and unclench my hands from around his throat, but finally I let go, and his body fell to the floor and did not move again. I sat down suddenly beside him, my legs just giving way. I hurt so bad I could hardly breathe. There was blood all over me. My uncle James was dead. I wanted to hold him in my arms, tell him I was sorry, but my arms wouldn’t work. I would have cried, but somehow…I was just too tired. Too deathly tired.

Molly crouched down beside me and put her arm across my shoulders. "I had to do it," she said. "He could still have won. And he would have killed you, Eddie."

"Of course he would," I said. "He was the Gray Fox. He was the best. He knew the mission always comes first."

"I killed him," said Molly. "So you wouldn’t have to."

"I know," I said. "That was kind of you. But…he was my dad, in every way that mattered. The one Drood I always loved and admired. The man I most wanted to be."

I cried then, and Molly did her best to comfort me. After a while she retrieved Oath Breaker from where I’d left it and hauled me back up onto my feet so she could half lead, half carry me out of the old library, back through the painting, into the main library again. Blood poured down my sides with every movement, my face was slick with sweat, and my hands hung numbly at my side. Away from the old library’s magic suppressor field, she was able to run a whole bunch of healing spells over me, but though she closed my wounds and stopped the bleeding, I couldn’t say I felt any better.

"It’s the strange matter in you," she said finally, frowning. "It’s interfering with my magics. I’ve stabilised you, but that’s about all I can do for you."

"That’s all right," I said, smiling at her. It didn’t feel like much of a smile, but I did my best. "It doesn’t matter, Molly. I’m dying anyway. And none of that three or four days shit, either. Just…hold me together long enough for me to do what I need to do."

"What can we do?" Molly said desperately. "Against something like the Heart?"

"You have Torc Cutter, and I have Oath Breaker," I said. "I’m going to destroy the Heart, and bring the whole damned family down."

"Because they betrayed you," said Molly.

"Because they lied," I said. "They lied to all of us. About who we are and what we are. We were never the heroes of our story. All along, we were the real bad guys."