armour if I m to do a Drood s work and bring my family home. This is the only Drood armour left in the world, in this Maze.
Hold everything, said Molly. Stand right there. Don t move! Are you crazy? Are you seriously proposing to go in there and try to persuade Moxton s murderous mistake to act as your armour? It ll kill you on sight! And even if it doesn t, how the hell could you hope to control it?
I can t, I said. But I think I can make a deal with it. Service for a while, in return for freedom.
Even if it should agree, which it won t, how are you going to get out of the Maze? It s designed to keep anything from getting out!
But it never met you and me, Molly. This is where you come in. You re going to be my beacon. I want you to connect us magically, heart to heart and soul to soul a bond that nothing can break. And then all I ll have to do is follow the thread back through the labyrinth to you. You can do that, can t you?
Yes, said Molly. I can do that. But I m not going to. I am not letting you walk into that death trap on your own, to face that murder machine on your own. You re too used to having your armour, to being untouchable. That thing hates Droods! It ll kill you on sight! You need me with you to protect you. To keep you alive long enough to negotiate with the bloody thing.
We can t force it to do anything, I said steadily. My only hope is to persuade it. One Drood on his own shouldn t seem any kind of threat.
Even if it does agree, it ll only be biding its time till it s free of the Maze, said Molly. Then it ll just stamp you into the ground and head off. Do you really want to be responsible for letting such a thing loose on the world? The only existing Drood armour, with all that strength and power, and nothing to restrain it?
Once I put on the rogue armour I ll take command through the torc, I said. My own little trap. It shouldn t suspect anything. They didn t know about strange matter back then. I m gambling the strange matter in my torc will give me some measure of control over the armour. Not for long, probably, but hopefully long enough to get my family back. And then there ll be the whole family, in strange-matter armour, to stand against it. We have Ethel now, not the Heart. That should make all the difference.
But
I know, Molly! I do, really. I don t like the odds, either. But what else is there?
You don t need armour to be a hero, Eddie. You never did.
That s sweet of you, Molly. But I need armour to be a Drood. The Last Drood, with all my family depending on me. And the Maze is where I have to go to find it.
I really don t like this, said Molly.
Far too many if s and maybe s Far too many things that can go wrong!
I don t like it, either, and it s my plan, I said. I ve spent all this time trying to come up with something else, but the family has to come first. The world needs my family, and only I can find them and bring them back. Anything for the family.
But what if the rogue armour is too powerful for you? What if it traps you inside it, like Moxton, and you can t control it?
That s where you come in again. While I m in the Maze, I need you busy out here, whipping up some kind of magic to give me the upper hand.
Molly nodded stiffly. I can do that. You d be amazed what I can do when I m motivated enough.
Look. I promise I m not going to be stupid about this, I said. If it clearly is too powerful or crazy to be controlled, I shall run like hell and leave it behind in the Maze. But I m pretty sure it ll talk to me. It hasn t spoken to a Drood in God knows how long. It s bound to be curious.
I don t think it s going to have anything to say that you re going to want to hear, said Molly.
What if it chases you back through the Maze? Drood armour can run a lot faster than any Drood ever could. What if you lead it out?
Then use your magic to seal off the entrance to the Maze, I said steadily. So that nothing can get out. Not even me.
Eddie! I can t.
Yes, you can! We can t risk letting it out, Molly. Do whatever you have to do. And if I m lost in action, go find someone else to help you bring the Droods back to this world.
I can t leave you in there! I can t abandon you!
You ll be saving the world, Molly. From the Droods last folly. When the time comes you ll do what s right. I have faith in you.
I ll never abandon you, Molly said fiercely. If I have to, I ll seal you and the armour inside the Maze and then I ll go find my sisters, Isabella and Louisa, and we ll all come back to get you out.
I had to smile. Of course you will. All three Metcalf sisters in one place, working together Even Moxton s Mistake couldn t stand against the three of you.
Molly stepped forward and hugged me hard. I hugged her back, like a drowning man clinging onto a lifeline. There was a part of me that wondered if I would ever hold her again. But I knew my duty. I ve always known my duty. Eventually we let go of each other, and I turned quickly away so I wouldn t change my mind and walked into the entrance of the hedge Maze. Behind me I could hear Molly muttering urgently, already working hard on her magic, forging the link between us to bind us together.
I didn t look back. I wasn t strong enough for that.
The moment I walked into the Maze, everything changed. The impenetrable darkness gave way to a pleasant and calm summer s light but the air was impossibly tense, charged with anticipation, the feeling of something significant about to happen. Something dangerous, something bad but something that mattered. I walked steadily forward, taking left and right turns at random, heading hopefully in the direction of the centre, the hidden heart of the Maze.
I wasn t alone. I could feel another presence in my bones and in my water out there, in the endless hedgerows. The hedges themselves looked pretty fragile and I wondered whether it might not be simpler to just vault over them or crash right through them but if it was that simple, the rogue armour would have done it long ago. I had no idea what powerful forces had been put in place to hold the Maze together. So I just walked up and down the narrow ways, fighting a constant urge to look back over my shoulder, in case something was sneaking up behind me.
And then I stopped abruptly and listened. I could hear something moving deeper in the Maze. Something running back and forth, running hard and fast, round and round me in great circles, drawing slowly but steadily closer. Something big and heavy, with great pounding feet that shook the earth. It roared suddenly, a huge and terrifying scream of rage and hate and long frustration. Not in any way a human sound. More like a great steam whistle sounding in the depths of Hell. The roar went on and on, long after human lungs would have collapsed, circling round and round me, moving inhumanly fast. The scream shut off abruptly.
It wanted me to know it was coming. It was taking its time closing in on me, not because it wanted to frighten me or because it was in any way cautious but simply because the sheer complexity of the hedgerows worked against it, keeping it from me.
I swallowed hard, put one hand to the useless torc at my throat and started forward again. Because I needed to feel I was doing something to give myself at least the illusion of being in some control of the situation. Part of me just wanted to get this done and over with, whatever the outcome. My stomach muscles ached from the tension, and my back muscles crawled in anticipation of the attack I d probably never feel, anyway. Waiting for the armour to jump out and pull me down, like a lion with its prey. I wasn t used to feeling vulnerable or afraid or helpless. But I kept going. Anything, for the family. I still had that.
Finally I rounded a corner and there it was, waiting for me. Standing there, poised, half crouching, confronting me. And for the first time I realised how other people must feel when they come face-to-face for the first time with a Drood in his armour. How scary and intimidating that must be when you know you re face-to-face with something that can kill you in an instant.
Moxton s Mistake didn t look like traditional Drood armour. Nothing like the seamless, jointless, smooth golden armour the family has always favoured. There were definite articulated joints at elbow and knee and ankle, though not set entirely in the proper places, giving the sense of an elongated, subtly inhuman anatomy. The oversized hands were more like dreadful gauntlets. The feet were more like hooves. It had the same featureless face mask, though the proportions seemed subtly wrong. Even the golden sheen was wrong. It looked
