by the Accelerated Men. The air was so full of the stench of blood I could taste it in my mouth. The Armourer came over to join me, picking his way carefully through the bodies. He'd armoured down, and was beaming happily.
'Eddie, there you are! I found these wonderful little people, emerging from their hiding places! Slaves to the Immortals… They say they know you.'
'We are not little people!' said a kobold, peering suddenly out from behind the Armourer. 'We are underpeople! Are we free now?'
'Yes,' I said. 'To stay or to go, as you please. Your masters are dead. I'm afraid I had to promise the Castle to the Spawn of Frankenstein…'
'Our tunnels are waiting,' said the kobold. 'Still, they're going to need people, to help them settle in. We can do that. For gold… We like gold.'
'I'm sure we can negotiate a fair agreement between you and the Bride,' said the Armourer, still beaming happily. 'It's a big Castle; I'm sure there's room for everyone.'
The Sarjeant-at-Arms came striding over to join us, also armoured down. He was frowning, which is never a good sign.
'There's no sign of the Immortal Leader,' he said flatly. 'We've checked all the bodies, and he's not there. He could have got out through the teleport ring, before we destroyed it.'
'The ring,' I said. 'He's gone to Area 52, to get his hands on the Apocalypse Door. I have to go after him.'
'Me too,' said Molly. 'I am never leaving you alone again.'
'Yes!' said the Armourer. 'It is good to see you alive and well, Molly. May I ask, how exactly did you…'
'Later,' I said. 'Oh, Uncle Jack… While I'm off saving the world one more time, there is something I need you to do for me. There's something rather special living under the hill, on the road leading up from the Hotel. I promised him he could come back to the Hall, and live with us. Could you take care of that for me?'
'Of course,' said the Armourer. 'No problem. Why are you smiling like that?'
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Knock Knock Knocking on Heaven's Door 'S o,' I said. 'Molly and I have to to get to to Area 52, the most heavily shielded and guarded military base in the world, stop Doctor Delirium or Tiger Tim from opening the Apocalypse Door and unleashing all the horrors of Hell upon the world, and also stop the Immortal leader Methuselah from transforming the Door into the Paradise Door, so he can open it and go through to take Heaven by storm.'
'And give everyone present a good kicking, just on general principles,' said Molly. 'And then afterwards, I thought we might have a little light supper, with some of that nice peach brandy you like.'
'I could eat,' I said wistfully. 'Seems like ages since I had the chance to sit down and tuck in. But, needs must when the Devil's peering over your shoulder and sniggering. The Merlin Glass can't take us directly into Area 52; the place has far too many shields and protections. But I think I've persuaded it to drop us off close to a main entrance. So, let's to it. Busy, busy, busy, and never a moment to rest.'
'You can't just run off and leave me to deal with transporting a dragon's head the size of a mountain!' said the Armourer, just a bit shrilly.
'Of course I can,' I said.? 'Watch me.'
I moved over to one side with Molly, while the Sarjeant-at-Arms did his best to restrain the Armourer. We both knew he'd cope; this was just his little way of telling me not to take him for granted. I summoned up the Merlin Glass, and instructed it to show me the hidden entrance it had found for Area 52. But when I looked into the hand mirror, all I could see was an endless vista of snow and ice, without a single structure or a living thing for as far as the eye could see. I gave the mirror a good hard shake, but the view didn't change. At least it wasn't an aerial view this time. Either the base was invisible behind its shields, or it was underground, or this was just as close to the entrance as the Glass could get us. I shrugged, and commanded the Merlin Glass to open a doorway.
It leapt out of my hand, and then hung on the air before me, growing rapidly in size until it was big enough for Molly and me to walk through. And then the door opened, connecting here with there, and brilliant light shone out, throwing back the darkness of the German night. I had to look away for a moment, dazzled, and then shuddered suddenly as a bitter cold wind came howling out of the doorway, shot through with snow and ice crystals. Molly squeezed in close beside me, and with our eyes narrowed against the Antarctic light, we stepped through the doorway.
The terrible cold stopped me dead in my tracks, piercing my flesh and sinking into my bones. The wind cut me like a knife, and my lungs filled with razor blades as I tried to breathe the frozen air. Snow swirled around me, driven this way and that by the blustering wind. I armoured up, and cried out in relief inside my golden mask as my armour shielded me from the bitter cold. It took me a moment to stop shaking and clear my head, and then I looked quickly around for Molly. Who was quite happy, inside a personal shield so powerful I could actually see it shimmering on the air around her. She stood hands on hips, looking about her with an infectious grin.
'Isn't this the most spectacular thing you've ever seen, Eddie?' She had a point. We'd come a long way from the grim surroundings of Castle Frankenstein. The sky was a sharp, almost painful blue, and the sun burned like a demon's eye. Snow fields stretched away for miles, rising and falling, capped to one side by a jagged range of snow-covered mountains. The heavy winds lifted sudden clouds of snow off the mountain peaks and threw them this way and that. Not a single living thing moved anywhere on the icy panorama, for as far as the eye could see. For all its snow and ice and cold, the Antarctic was really just another desert.
Molly stretched slowly, as unselfconscious as any cat, grinning widely. 'Now this is more like it! There's a whole load of local magic here for me to draw on, and replenish my batteries. Pretty much untapped, as far as I can tell. I guess not many people get out this far.'
'Most people have got more sense,' I said. 'What are you picking up from the Hidden World?'
'Oh, there's lots going on round here, but nothing to do with people, or Area 52.'
I raised my Sight and looked around me, and discovered the empty Antarctic scene was anything but. Huge semitransparent snakes the size of subway trains writhed and curled slowly through the snow deep below us, vast blind creatures following their own unknowable instincts. The sky above us was full of wind-walkers, air elementals the size of blue whales, swimming languidly through the coruscating aurora, far too big to take any notice of the tiny mortals watching from below. And off in the distance, standing inhumanly still on the horizon: dim and vaguely humanlike shapes. Hundreds of them, just standing, and watching. There was something vague and insubstantial about them, as though they weren't totally solid or completely real. Images out of Time, perhaps, from the Past or even the Future. There have always been legends of another tribe of Man, another species, waiting patiently in the empty places of the world, ready to come forward and take over, should Humanity fail. Our replacement, if things should go very wrong.
I'm not sure whether I find that comforting or not.
But even with my Sight I still couldn't make out any sign of Area 52, or the entrance we were supposed to be near. Really well shielded. So I lowered my Sight, and breathed a little more easily. (You can't See too much of the world as it really is, for too long. It wears you out.) The Merlin Glass had disappeared, immediately after dropping us here, as though ashamed. I called it back out, and it slipped almost apologetically back into my hand. I told it to show me the way to Area 52's entrance, and the mirror immediately presented me a whole new view of unbroken snow and ice. I swept the Glass back and forth, and it tugged insistently in my hand in one particular direction, like a hound on a scent. So I set off into the snow and the cold, following the mirror, and Molly moved happily along beside me, merrily singing an old song called
'Eskimo Nell.'
I ploughed through the deep snow, my armoured legs sinking in deep with every step, until finally I was trudging along in a low trench of my own making. The weight of my armour pulled me down, but its strength enabled me to blast right through the packed snow as though it wasn't even there. Brief flurries of snow shot up into the air, flying left and right, as I stomped and kicked through the snow, forcing my way through by sheer brute force. Common sense told me that Doctor Delirium and Tiger Tim wouldn't do anything with the Apocalypse Door until Methuselah showed up, and we had to be close on the Immortal's trail. But I wasn't sure I believed common
