'All right,' I said. 'That… is just unfair. I have business with the current occupants of Castle Frankenstein, but after I've dealt with them… Would you like to come home with me? You'd be welcome at Drood Hall, for whatever time you have left.'
I couldn't tell you why I made the offer. I never met a dragon that didn't deserve killing on general principles, like the one at the Magnificat… but I felt sorry for this one. Just left lying here, alone and ignored, fading away down the years… It didn't sit right with me. I know; it's stray dog syndrome with a vengeance, but… the family could learn a lot from talking to a dragon. We don't normally get the chance.
Home… Yes, Drood. I think I would like that. The world is very quiet here, and empty. I would enjoy having something new to look at.
'I've noticed that,' I said. 'Where is everything? What happened to all the inhabitants of the Hidden World?'
They killed them. Killed them all. From the greatest to the smallest, from the most dangerous to the most insignificant, they wiped them all out. In the space of one long bloody night.
I didn't have to ask who they were. The Immortals had protected their privacy and their security by destroying everything that surrounded them. Just because they could. And I thought my family was ruthless…
'I have business with those murderous sons of bitches,' I said. 'When it's all over, I'll send a message to my people, and we'll see about getting you out from under this hill. Talk to you later.'
Good-bye, Drood. It is a kind offer, and I wish you good fortune. But honesty compels me to inform you that in my experience, no one comes back from Castle Frankenstein.
I followed the increasingly rough road up the side of dragon hill, and finally came to a halt atop a tall bluff, looking down at the ruins of Castle Frankenstein. Even this close, the illusion was perfect. Just a couple of stumpy stone towers, a few tumbledown walls, crawling ivy and dark shadows; all of it standing starkly against the dark sky. It would have been convincing… but even with my foreknowledge of its true nature, I would have known something was wrong. There was no trace of any of the wildlife that would normally have infested such a ruin. I couldn't See a single life sign anywhere. No rats, no wild dogs or feral cats, not even a single bat. And that… was a real giveaway. I looked the ruins over carefully with my Sight, but couldn't See a single gap or weakness anywhere in the illusion. Which meant I was going to have to do it the hard way.
I started down the steep crumbling path that led to the Castle, wincing every time I dislodged a few small rocks, but I hadn't got far before I had to stop abruptly. The way was blocked by the Immortals' first line of defence: a simple but incredibly powerful force field. It hung on the air before me, invisible, intangible, but carrying enough energy to fry me on the spot if I so much as touched it with a fingertip. There was a built-in avoidance ward, a basic go away nothing to see here influence, enough to keep out the tourists; but I was concentrating so hard on not making any noise that my Sight only caught it at the last moment. I'm pretty sure my torc would have saved me by automatically armouring up, but that would have set off God alone knew how many alarms. So I stood very still, feeling the cold sweat bead on my face, as I realised how close I'd just come to blowing my whole mission.
Time to use the Chameleon Codex. I touched a single fingertip to the silver cuff link, muttered the activating Words, and the stored DNA data rushed into my system, rewriting me from within.
My flesh crawled, surging and rippling all over my body, like a terrible itch I couldn't scratch, and then I swayed on my feet as everything suddenly snapped into place. I held up my hands, turning them back and forth, but in the gloom they looked just the same. Hard to tell with hands, really. I started to call up the Merlin Glass, so I could study my new face in its mirror, but again stopped myself just in time. Just the proximity of such a powerful artefact would undoubtedly trigger its own set of alarms. I had to trust that I was Rafe now, right down to his Immortal DNA.
And people say their lives are complicated.
I walked forward, into the force field, and it opened up before me, its subtle energies trailing across my bare face like caressing fingers. And then I was through, and moving on, and Castle Frankenstein lay open and defenceless before me.
CHAPTER TEN
Assault on Castle Frankenstein I could have just walked up to the main entrance, banged on the door and demanded to be let in, but somehow I just didn't like to. There had to be more than getting into Castle Frankenstein than just having the right face. So I made my approach slowly and cautiously, sticking to the shadows wherever possible. I wasn't used to sneaking up on things without the benefit of my armour to fall back on, if things went seriously wrong in a hurry. The Castle seemed to grow bigger and bigger the closer I got, its vast stone face looming over me, impossibly tall and foreboding. Lights burned fiercely in all the many windows, though here and there unhealthy glows seeped past the outlines of closed shutters. And still, not a sign of a human guard anywhere. Not up on the high crenellated battlements, not peering out of any window, not even standing guard outside the main entrance. Did the Immortals really feel that safe, that secure? I suppose if no one's dared attack you where you live for centuries, you just come to assume no one ever will. Especially if you've got the kind of protections in place that can keep out gods and monsters and Droods. But after the failed attack on Drood Hall, and the rout of the Accelerated Men, they should have been expecting some kind of re sponse, or counterattack… Could they really be that arrogant, that complacent?
First rule in the field: when events seem too good to be true, they probably are too good to be true.
Still, the Castle's quite remarkable protections had failed only because I had access to the false Rafe's DNA, and that was a very recent development. Even the best of protections need regular updating. I kept checking around me with my Sight raised, looking for new levels of protection, disguised booby traps, land mines or trapdoors, but there was nothing. It was almost completely dark now, the only light shining down from the Castle's long rows of windows. Which left me plenty of shadows to take advantage of, right up to the Castle itself. But the approach to the main door was sharply illuminated, with harsh white electric light. Presumably backed up by modern surveillance systems, because nobody's that secure. I kept well away from the lit door, and sneaked along the front wall, my shoulder pressed hard against the cold rough stone. I kept my head well down, ducking under each of the lit windows, listening carefully.
The night was eerily silent, but through the closed windows I could hear conversations, raised voices, laughter. They sounded just like ordinary people, not the evil murdering bastards they were. But I suppose even monsters aren't always monsters, when they're at home. Did they plot to murder my Molly, in one of these bright and cheerful rooms? I had to stop for a moment, as a cold hand closed around my heart, and squeezed. Not now. Not now… I'd mourn my love later, when I had time. I made myself move on, darting from window to window, until finally I came to one where there was no sound at all. I crouched there a while, motionless, until I was sure the room was deserted. And then I held my right hand up before me, and studied the golden ring gleaming on my finger. The Gemini Duplicator. It was time to try out the Armourer's new toy. I pressed hard against the ring with the fingers on either side of it, and just like that there were two of me.
And the duplicate was standing on the other side of the wall, inside the room. I'd spotted that possibility early on, when the Armourer first explained the rings' extended range to me.
At first, being two of me felt really freaky. All my senses were registering in duplicate, in a weird stereo effect. I was in the light and in the dark, in the cold and in the warm, inside and out. I swayed on two sets of feet, unbalanced in a whole new way, and concentrated fiercely until I could separate out the two sensory streams. I found the trick of it surprisingly quickly; like patting yourself on the head while simultaneously rubbing your stomach. I'd always known that talent would come in handy one day. At first, my consciousness kept switching back and forth from one head to the other, but I soon learned to keep both sets of thoughts going at once, holding one set in the foreground while pushing the other back.
Still; really freaky.
I pushed down the outside me and took a good look around the room I was in. (While thinking, Was the one outside the original me, with the one inside a duplicate? Or had the Gemini Duplicator projected me where I needed to be, while generating a duplicate to stay outside? And, where did all the extra mass come from, to make a whole second body?) My heads started to hurt. When this was all over, and I got back to Drood Hall, I was going
