for that I m going to need weapons.
And so we went down again, into the family Armoury, set deep and deep beneath the West Wing. Except when I cleared the rubble away from the floor that should have held the entrance to the Armoury approach it wasn t there. I stared down at the bare dusty floorboards, which had clearly never been disturbed, and then looked around to make sure I was in the right room. But even with all the damage and destruction, I had no doubt I was in the right place. The entrance should have been here, but it wasn t and clearly never had been. I didn t know what to think.
The Armoury has always been in the same place ever since the family set it down below the Hall, centuries ago. Right down in the bedrock under the West Wing, as far away from the family as they could get, to protect the rest of us from the weapons development and explosives testing that went on every day, and the inevitable unexpected side effects produced by lab assistants with a whole lot of scientific curiosity and not nearly enough self-preservation instincts. Impossible.
I had to search through three other rooms to find a trapdoor in the floor that to my certain knowledge hadn t been there before. I kicked the last of the rubble aside, leaned over the steel-banded wooden square and studied it thoughtfully for a long moment, ignoring the threatening creaks and groans from the ceiling overhead. Molly stirred uneasily at my side.
This room is trying to tell us something, Eddie, and I m pretty sure Get the hell out of here while you still can would be a fairly accurate translation.
Hell with that, I said. It s taken long enough, but I think I ve finally found a clue. There s no way I could be wrong about how you get down into the family Armoury. I ve been sneaking down there to pester Uncle Jack since I was ten years old.
Maybe they made a new entrance while you were gone, said Molly, moving quickly sideways to avoid a stream of dust falling from the ceiling. Maybe they blew up the old one.
I haven t been gone that long, I said.
You couldn t rush a major change like that through the Works Committee in less than a twelve-month. You don t know what bureaucracy is until you ve been part of a family that s been around for centuries.
But the trapdoor is intact, said Molly. Which would suggest
Yes, I said. It would.
I grabbed the heavy iron ring set into the top of the wooden trapdoor and hauled it open with an effort. It started to slam backwards onto the floor, and Molly and I grabbed it at the last moment and lowered it carefully down. More dust was falling in thick streams from the ceiling, and I was getting a strong feeling that one good slam might be enough to bring the whole thing down. Once, I wouldn t have given a damn, but not having my armour was making me cautious. The trapdoor opening revealed an unfamiliar set of stone steps leading down into gloom. Old, scuffed steps, polished smooth by much hard use. The stairs had clearly been there a long time. I led the way down, with Molly treading close on my heels and peering over my shoulder. I was just as fascinated as she was. We were in new territory now, and for the first time I began to wonder if things really were as they appeared to be.
The stairs gave entrance to the Armoury, which looked exactly as I remembered it. The family had set up its Armoury in what used to be, centuries earlier, the old wine cellars. The heavy, specially reinforced blast-proof door was intact, but once again it hung partway open. I squeezed through the gap between the door and the frame, with Molly pressing so close behind me that she was breathing heavily down my neck.
The lights flickered on as we entered the Armoury proper. It s really just a long series of interconnected stone chambers with bare plastered walls, curved ceilings high above, and mile upon mile of multicoloured wiring tacked carelessly into place across the walls, crisscrossing in patterns that may or may not have meant something to somebody at some time. All the overhead fluorescent lights were working, but I realised immediately that I couldn t hear the usual strained sounds of the air-conditioning. The air was stale, but there was no smell of smoke or sign of fire damage.
I don t see any signs of a firefight, said Molly, looking quickly about her. No bullet holes, no energy burns or anything more extreme to suggest the people here fought back
No, I said. But there has been a hell of a lot of looting. Look at all the gaps. I m not seeing half the things I should be seeing. No computers, no weapons. Even the shooting range is empty. It s all so quiet. I don t think I ve ever heard the Armoury this quiet before. There was always something going on; Uncle Jack or his assistants working on some new way to blow themselves and everybody else up. It s eerie.
I walked slowly between deserted workstations and abandoned testing grounds that should have been full of loud noises and general excitement as Uncle Jack s technicians happily risked their own lives and others testing appalling new weapons of mass disturbance. Nothing had been destroyed in the Armoury, unlike in the War Room or the Operations Room, but the enemy had stripped the place clean. They hadn t been interested in precious pieces of art that would have sold for millions, but state-of-the-art weapons? Those were different. I checked everywhere, but there were no golden-armoured bodies, no heads on spikes, not even a splash of dried blood. A few things had been overturned here and there, but no signs of any struggle. Which was just wrong. No matter what the odds or the threats, Uncle Jack and his lab rats would have fought to the last to keep the Armoury out of the hands of our enemies. Hell, Uncle Jack would have blown the whole place up before he d risk letting Drood weapons fall into the wrong hands. So why didn t he?
I stopped and looked about me in frustration. This would have broken Uncle Jack s heart, I said finally.
To see his precious Armoury stripped bare
Molly nodded understandingly. The Armoury was always his pride and joy. Eddie, the information in his head would have made him invaluable. Do you think?
I don t know, I said. I don t know what to think anymore. Hello. What s this?
I knelt down beside a workstation. Something had caught my eye, but I wasn t sure what. It turned out to be a small black blob on the floor. Molly crouched down beside me, looked at the blob and then looked at me.
All right; I ll bite. What s so significant about a small black blobby thing? What is it?
It s a portable door, I said. Uncle Jack used to hand them out like travel-sickness pills to every agent going out in the field. Just slap one of these against any flat surface, and hey, presto! Instant door!
So why did he stop handing them out? said Molly, instantly cautious.
Something about unacceptable side effects, I said, weighing the blob in my hand. And if the Armourer thought they were unacceptable This must have been overlooked.
Take it anyway, said Molly. We re going to need all the help we can get.
Damn right, I m taking it, I said. I slipped the thing into my pocket, straightened up and looked around me. It s useful, but it s not a weapon. I want something that goes bang! in a horribly destructive and disturbing way.
And then my head snapped round suddenly as a Voice said Eddie! I looked back and forth, but there was no one else in the Armoury. I looked at Molly.
Tell me you heard that, too.
Of course I heard it! Someone said your name in a seriously spooky way. But I scanned the whole place before we came in here, and I am telling you we re the only ones here. No other life signs anywhere, and that includes lab specimens. So who Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I m getting something.
She moved slowly between the empty workstations, turning her head back and forth, scowling fiercely as she searched for something she could sense but not see. I was concentrating on the Voice. It had definitely sounded familiar but I couldn t place it. I knew I d heard someone call me by my name in just that tone of voice before, but Molly stopped suddenly before a pile of junk on the floor and cried out triumphantly. She knelt down and stuck both hands into the pile before I could stop her, and pulled out the Merlin Glass. She jumped up to show it to me, brandishing the small silver-backed hand mirror.
Result! This is more like it, Eddie!
Could you please stop waving it around so heartily, I said carefully. That is a very powerful and very dangerous object, and this is the Armoury, after all. The Glass was worrying enough as it was, before it got broken in Castle Shreck, and God alone knows what state it s in now after Uncle Jack s been tinkering with it.
Molly sniffed airily but wasted no time in pressing the Glass into my hands. I accepted it cautiously and looked it over. The Glass had been created for the Drood family by Merlin Satanspawn, way back in the day, and it had many useful properties. But it had been very badly damaged during the Drood assault on the Immortals at Castle Shreck, to the point where it didn t work at all anymore. The reflective surface had been cracked from side to
