were one of two things I craved. The other was revenge.’
Artemis yawned. ‘How fascinating. A secret compartment. What a genius you are.
How can you fail to take over the world with a booty box full of truffles?’
Opal smoothed Artemis’s hair back from his forehead. ‘Make all the jokes you want, Mud Boy. Words are all you have now.’
Minutes later, Merv brought the stealth shuttle in to land. Artemis and Holly were handcuffed and led down the retractable gangplank. They emerged into a giant tunnel, dimly illuminated by glo-strips. Most of the lighting panels were shattered and the rest were on their last legs. This section of the chute had once been part of a thriving metropolis, but now it was completely deserted and derelict. Demolition notices were pasted across various drooping billboards.
Opal pointed to one. ‘This whole place is being torn down in a month. We just made the deadline.’
‘Lucky us,’ muttered Holly.
Merv and Scant prodded them wordlessly along the chute with their gun barrels.
The road surface beneath their feet was buckled and cracked. Swear toads clustered in damp patches, spouting obscenities. The roadside was lined with abandoned concession stands and souvenir shops. In one window, human dolls were arranged in various warlike poses.
Artemis stopped, despite the gun at his back. ‘Is that how you see us?’ he asked.
‘Oh no,’ said Opal. ‘You’re much worse than that, but the manufacturers don’t want to scare the children.’
Several huge hemispherical structures squatted at the end of the tunnel, each one the size of a football stadium. They were constructed of hexagonal panels, welded together along the seams. Some panels were opaque, others were transparent, and each panel was roughly the size of a small house.
Before the hemispheres stood a huge arch with strips of tattered gold leaf hanging from its frame. A sign hung from the arch, emblazoned with two-metre-high Gnommish letters.
‘The Eleven Wonders of the Human World,’ declared Opal theatrically. ‘Ten thousand years of civilization, and you only manage to produce eleven so-called wonders.’
Artemis tested his handcuffs. They were tightly fastened.
‘You know of course that there are only seven wonders on the official list.’
‘I know that,’ said Opal testily. ‘But humans are so narrow-minded. Fairy scholars studied the video footage and decided to include the Abu Simbel Temple in Egypt, the Moai Statues in Rapa Nui, the Borobudur temple in Indonesia and the Throne Hall of Persepolis in Iran.’
‘If humans are so narrow-minded,’ commented Holly, ‘I’m surprised that you want to be one of them.’
Opal passed through the arch. ‘Well, I would prefer to be a pixie — no offence,
Artemis — but the fairy People are shortly to be wiped out. I shall be seeing to that personally as soon as I have dropped you off in your new home. In ten minutes we’ll be on our way to the island, watching on the shuttle monitors while you two get torn apart.’
They proceeded through the theme park, past the first hemisphere, which contained a two-thirds scale- model of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Several of the hexagonal panels had been ripped out and Artemis could see the remains of the model through the gaps. It was an impressive sight, made even more so by the scores of shaggy creatures scrambling up and down the pyramid’s slopes.
‘Trolls,’ explained Opal. ‘They have taken over the exhibits. But don’t worry, they are extremely territorial and won’t attack unless you approach the pyramid.’
Artemis was beyond amazement at this point, but, even so, the sight of these magnificent carnivores preying on each other was enough to speed his heart up by a few beats. He paused to study the nearest specimen. It was a terrifying creature, at least two and a half metres tall, with grimy dreadlocks swinging about its massive head. The troll’s fur-matted arms swung below its knees and two curved, serrated tusks jutted from its lower jaw. The beast watched them pass, its night eyes glowing red in their sockets.
The group arrived at the second exhibit, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The hologram at the entrance displayed a revolving image of the Turkish building.
Opal read the history panel. ‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘Now why do you suppose someone would name a male child after a female goddess?’
‘It’s my father’s name,’ said Artemis wearily, having explained this a hundred times. ‘It can be used for girls or boys, and it means the hunter. Rather apt, don’t you think? It may interest you to know that your chosen human name, Belinda, means “beautiful snake”. Also rather fitting. Half of it, at any rate.’
Opal pointed a tiny finger at Artemis’s nose. ‘You are a very annoying creature, Fowl. I do hope all humans are not like you.’ She nodded at Scant. ‘Spray them,’ she ordered.
Scant took a small atomizer from his pocket, dousing Holly and Artemis liberally with the contents. The liquid was yellow and foul-smelling.
‘Troll pheromones,’ said Scant, almost apologetically. ‘These trolls will take one whiff of this and go absolutely crazy. To them, you smell like females in heat. When they find out you’re not, they’ll tear you into a thousand little bits, then chew on the pieces.
We’ve had any broken panels repaired, so there’s no escape. You can jump in the river if you like — the scent should wash off in about a thousand years. And, Captain Short, I have removed the wings from your suit and shorted out the cam foil. I did leave the heating coils — after all, one deserves a sporting chance.’
A lot of use heating coils will be against trolls, thought Holly glumly.
Merv was checking the exhibit’s entrance through one of the transparent panels.
‘OK. We’re clear.’
The pixie opened the main entrance with a remote. Distant howls resonated from inside the exhibit. Artemis could see several trolls brawling on the steps of the replica temple. He and Holly would be torn apart.
The Brill brothers propelled them into the hemisphere.
‘Best of luck,’ said Opal, as the door slid shut. ‘Remember, you’re not alone. We’ll be watching you via the cameras.’
The door clanged shut ominously. Seconds later, the electronic locking panel began to fizzle as one of the Brill brothers melted it from the outside. Artemis and Holly were locked in with a bunch of amorous trolls, and they smelt like females of the species.
The Temple of Artemis exhibit was a scale model that had been constructed with painstaking accuracy, complete with animatronic humans going about their daily business as they would have been in 400 BC. Most of the models had been stripped to the wires by the trolls, but some moved jerkily along their tracks, bringing their gifts to the goddess. Any robot whose path brought them too close to a pack of trolls was pounced on and torn to shreds. It was a grim preview of Artemis and Holly’s own fate.
There was only one food supply: the trolls themselves. Cubs and stragglers were picked off by the bulls and butchered with teeth, claws and tusks. The pack leader took the lion’s share, then tossed the carcass to the baying pack. If the trolls were confined here much longer, they would wipe themselves out.
Holly shouldered Artemis roughly to the ground. ‘Quickly,’ she said. ‘Roll in the mud. Cover yourself, smother the scent.’
Artemis did as he was told, scooping mud over himself with his manacled hands.
Any spots he missed were quickly slathered by Holly. He did the same for her. In moments the pair were almost unrecognizable.
Artemis was feeling something he could not remember having felt before: absolute fear. His hands shook, rattling the chains. There was no room in his brain for analytical thought. / can’t, he thought. / can’t do anything.
Holly took charge, dragging him to his feet and propelling him to a cluster of fake merchants’ tents beside a fast-flowing river. They crouched behind the ragged canvas, peering at the trolls through rents in the material made by long claws. Two animatronic merchants sat on mats outside the tents, their baskets brimming with gold- and-ivory statuettes of the goddess Artemis. Neither model had a head. One of the heads lay in the dust some distance away, its artificial brain poking out through a bite hole.
‘We need to get the cuffs off,’ said Holly urgently.
‘What?’ mumbled Artemis.
Holly shook her manacles in his face. ‘We need to get these off now! The mud will protect us for a minute,
