Lex hesitated, the hat now in his hands. ‘Well, then,’ he said with a slow smile, ‘I’ll go down and get Lucius now and I’ll deal with the enchanter when I get back. All right?’
He stood up and put the hat on his head.
‘Human minds aren’t built for magic,’ Schmidt tried once again. ‘Lex, I’ve told you, you’re just as likely to kill yourself with that hat as you are to accomplish anything with it.’
‘Look,’ Lex said impatiently, ‘I’m not arguing with you about it any more. My brother’s down there and I’m going down to get him. Or at least I’m going to try. If all I accomplish by putting on this hat is to blow my own head off, well… then at least there’ll be one less rotter in the world, right?’
‘If you really mean to go, take me with you.’
Lex stared at him, shocked into silence for a moment. ‘I’m not making up a picnic of it, Monty,’ he managed at last. ‘I can’t think of a single reason why you’d want to-’
‘Employer’s liability,’ Schmidt said promptly.
‘Eh?’
‘You’re a minor and technically still my employee. If I let you go down there and you get yourself killed, I’ll be held liable for your death as your employer and sent to prison. Just because we’re not in a law office doesn’t mean my duty of care towards you is discharged.’
‘So fire me.’
‘I don’t have the authority to fire you on my own. The other partners would have to approve it.’
‘Then I resign.’
‘It’s the same thing!’ Schmidt exclaimed in frustration. ‘Your resignation has to be accepted by all the partners before it’s effective. You never know — I might be of some help to you, so just take me — assuming you’re able to get there without killing yourself with magic first.’
‘Fine,’ Lex said with a shrug, very aware of how much time had been wasted and unwilling to waste any more. He closed his eyes and spread his hands, the silence of space pressing in on them for a moment whilst Lex concentrated on getting them both to the place of the Gods. Then he drew a deep breath and said loudly and clearly, ‘The Lands Beneath.’
The stories about the Lands Beneath were all wildly different and had changed constantly since the Great Divide. But most people agreed that there was treasure down there. And monsters. Some people claimed to have seen the Lands Beneath in nightmares but when these accounts were compared they all seemed to be completely lacking in common features.
Despite his worry over Lucius, and fear at his own unbelievable stupidity in trespassing into the home of the Gods, Lex couldn’t help but feel a sense of excitement at the prospect of getting to see exactly what the Lands Beneath looked like, and mentally prepared himself to be ready for anything. After speaking the words ‘Lands Beneath’ on the Space Ladders there was a brief, slightly worrying moment of insubstantiality before Schmidt and Lex found themselves standing in the snow in… in the most beautiful place that Lex had ever seen in his life! It was a forest of crystal, set beneath a silver, star-spangled sky. And the colours! Lex didn’t even know the names of some of them! Sparkling, glittering, twinkling loveliness..
He automatically reached out — to touch, to grab, to close his hands around the beauty that he saw… but then his nose suddenly started to bleed. Schmidt said something in a sharp, anxious kind of voice and reached out towards him but Lex pushed him away impatiently.
‘I don’t need your help!’ he snapped.
And then the cornucopia of colours started to spin, reminding him of the kaleidoscope he’d had when he’d been small. He lost his balance on the lurching ground as a deafening silence rang in his ears, blocking out all the sound…
About twenty seconds later, Schmidt was still bending over Lex trying to work out if he was dead or not when one of Lex’s eyes opened and he squinted at the lawyer in the silver light.
‘Am I dead?’ Lex asked.
‘Not yet,’ Schmidt grunted.
‘Oh good.’ Lex closed his eye and tried to breathe normally, uncomfortably aware of how fast his heart was beating and how cold the snow was beneath him. But after a moment, he couldn’t help a soft, rather breathless laugh.
Schmidt stared at him in blank incomprehension. ‘What in this whole situation,’ he said, ‘could possibly be even remotely amusing?’
‘I got here,’ Lex said. ‘I’m in the Lands Beneath.’ He opened his eyes and grinned at the lawyer. ‘I won’t believe you if you tell me you’re not even the least little bit excited to be here.’
Schmidt sighed and offered his hand to help Lex to his feet. ‘I don’t think you need have any worries about dying young,’ he said. ‘It’s a miracle you’ve survived this long as it is.’
‘I’m lucky,’ Lex replied, dusting the snow off his clothes.
Apart from a slight feeling of nausea, he now felt fine although he was beginning to rather dislike the hat. He considered taking it off now that he was here but decided against it. Although the enchanter could sense him when he wore it, he was most unlikely to attempt to pursue Lex to the home of the Gods. Even an enchanter would fear to do that. So in the meantime, he might as well keep the thing on although even Lex realised by now that if he used it again anytime soon it probably wasn’t going to improve his situation an awful lot. But if nothing else, at least it made him look taller.
‘This place is stunning!’ he said, looking round himself properly.
A hundred different colours dappled about them where they stood on the forest floor — for all the trees were made entirely out of crystal. The trunks and branches were white but the leaves were a mixture of bright colours. In fact, no leaf seemed to be the exact same shade. They ranged from emerald green to saffron yellow to peacock blue. The effect was enchanting beyond anything Lex had ever seen before.
The place was utterly silent. There didn’t appear to be anything or anybody around. Lucius certainly wasn’t there, nor was there any sign that he ever had been. The crystal forest did not move or sway in the breeze — even the smallest leaf was absolutely still. It was cool without a sun but it was not uncomfortably cold, partly because there was not even a breath of wind. The air itself was still and beautifully, wonderfully fresh as if no one had ever breathed it before. It was as if they were polluting it just by being there.
Lex and Schmidt could make out a clearing through the trees so they started to walk and came out of the forest within moments. Lex stared around at the new scenery, sure that his eyes must be almost popping out of his head at what he was seeing. He was used to forests, for there were lots of them in the Lands Above, even if they weren’t made of crystal. So whilst he hadn’t exactly felt at home in there, he had at least not felt as if he were on a different planet altogether. But the forest really had been nothing more than a small glade put there for recreational or aesthetic purposes and they weren’t actually in the countryside at all. They were at the edge of a huge city, the likes of which Lex had never dreamt of.
Towering before them were huge glass skyscrapers that must have been well over a hundred storeys. Considering the fact that neither Lex nor Schmidt had ever seen a building higher than five or six storeys before, this was an awe-inspiring, terrifying sight to them. There was a white monorail running quietly between the tall buildings but other than that there was no sound or movement at all. Gazing up at it all, Lex couldn’t help but feel discouraged. ‘It’ll be a nightmare finding Lucius in that lot,’ he said hopelessly. ‘Especially now that Lady Luck has abandoned me.’
‘She hardly abandoned you,’ Schmidt pointed out. ‘You double crossed her.’
‘Well, it’s the same thing,’ Lex snapped irritably.
He stalked across a snow-swept path leading away from the crystal forest and towards the city. Schmidt hurried after him and, falling into step beside him, said, ‘What’s your plan?’
Lex glanced at him. ‘Why do you always assume I have a plan? I’m just going into the city to see if I can find some Gods.’
‘Is that it?’
‘That’s all I got,’ he said with a shrug.
As Lex had suspected, finding the Gods did not prove to be problematic. Most of the Gods were not omniscient, but they were sharp-eyed, and forbidden trespassers in their realm were not likely to go unnoticed for
