The next room was a trap.
I recognised the place the moment I entered it. The room was
called Time Out, and it was full of ornate clocks and timepieces from across the
centuries, covering all four walls with everything from water clocks to atomic
devices. I never did like Time Out; always struck me as a sinister place, when I
was young. Full of the ticking of a million mad clocks. In this room time itself
could be slowed down, extended. A day could pass in here between the tick and
tock of a clock outside. Time Out was originally put together back in the
nineteenth century to make possible the observation of certain delicate
scientific and magical experiments, but these days it was mostly used by
students reviewing and cramming for an imminent exam.
I knew something was wrong before I was halfway across the room.
All the heavy ticks and tocks around me had taken on a strange dying fall, and
the air was thick as syrup. I looked back at Molly, still stuck in the hole in
the wall I’d made, her movements little more than a snail’s pace. There was
nothing wrong with her. It was the room. Time was slowing down, trapping me in
the room like an insect in amber. Like a prisoner in a cell with invisible,
intangible bars. I could cross the room in a few seconds only to find that days
had passed outside it, and the whole family waiting to meet me.
I raised my Sight, and the air seemed to shimmer around me,
thick with slowly congealing forces. It wasn’t something I could fight with my
armour. All its strength and speed meant nothing next to the inexorable power of
time. From all around me came the slowing remorseless ticking of the million mad
clocks, nailing me down, pinning me in place like an insect on display,
transfixed on a spike.
I lashed out at the grandfather clock next to me, and the heavy
wooden case exploded under the impact. I ripped out the chains and the pendulum
and threw them aside, and the great old clock was silenced. And time’s growing
hold on me seemed to hesitate…I grabbed up a seventeenth century carriage clock
and crushed it in my golden hand, and cogs and pinwheels flew out of it. Time’s
hold slipped away from me just a little. I could feel it. I laughed aloud and
rampaged round the room, smashing all the clocks, destroying everything I could
lay my hands on, until Molly was suddenly striding across the room towards me,
demanding to know what the hell I was doing. She hadn’t noticed anything. I
stopped, breathing hard, and looked around me. The room was a mess. And time
moved normally on its way, ticking and tocking along as though nothing had
happened. I shook my head at Molly and headed for the far wall. No point in
trying to explain. There wasn’t enough time.
I smashed through the wall as though it was cardboard and
stepped through into the corridor beyond. My feet shot out from under me, and
suddenly I was plummeting the length of the hallway, scrabbling frantically for
handholds on the walls as they rushed past me. Someone had changed the direction
of gravity so that the wall at the far end of the long hallway was now the
floor, and the two walls just the sides of a really long drop. I fell all the
way to the bottom, tumbling helplessly, until the far wall came flying up
towards me like a flyswatter. I tucked myself up into a ball, got my feet
underneath me, and used my armoured legs to soak up the impact as I hit.
Luckily, it was a really solid wall. Old stone, thick and
sturdy. I hit hard, and the stone cracked from top to bottom, but it held. I
took a moment to get my breath back. The hallway stretched endlessly above me,
the walls like mountainsides. I could see Molly way above me, looking out of the
hole I’d made in the wall, peering anxiously down at me. I yelled at her to stay
put. I thought hard as my heart rate slowed reluctantly back to something like
normal. The family had to know the fall alone wouldn’t be enough to kill me.
This was just another delaying tactic. It was all they had.
I forced myself out of the broken stone wall, damaging it still
further, and looked up at Molly. "Stay put! I’ll climb up to you!"
"I could retrieve you with my magic!" she yelled back. "Maybe
even undo the gravity inversion!"
She really did look a long way off. Maybe someone was messing
about with space here, as well as gravity. Or were they connected anyway? It was
a long time since my old science classes.
"No!" I yelled back. "Don’t do anything! Your magic could set
off the Hall’s inner defences!"
"You mean this isn’t—"
"Hell, no! This is just some crafty little bugger showing off
his lateral thinking."
I punched a hole in the left-hand wall that used to be the
floor, carefully pulled my golden hand back out again, and then made another
hole. I kept on punching holes until I had enough hand-and footholds to get
started, and then I climbed up the wall, heading back to Molly. I picked up
speed as I got the hang of it and got a rhythm going, and soon I was scuttling
up the wall like a giant spider. ( I winced as the thought occurred to me, and I
pushed it firmly away.) I soon reached the hole in the wall where Molly was
waiting, and she helped pull me back through. We both looked down at the long
drop below us, and the wall opposite.
"Now what?" said Molly.
"When in doubt, use brute force and ignorance," I said. "Climb
on my back."
She gave me hard look but finally did so, holding on tightly as
I walked back across the room we’d just come through. Then I took a good run up
to get some speed going, jumped through the hole and across the gap, and smashed
through the far wall into the room opposite. Molly jumped down from me, slapping
dust and splinters from her hair and shoulders.
"I don’t want to have to do that again, ever," she said firmly.
"Next time, I’ll fly us across."
I looked at her. "I didn’t know you could fly."
"Lot of things you don’t know about me. You should see what I
can do with a Ping-Pong ball."
I looked around the room and once again I recognised it. I
always thought of the long narrow chamber as the souvenir room. It was crammed
full of old trophies and mementos and a whole bunch of basically interesting old
stuff that my various ancestors had brought back from their travels around the
world. Books and maps, objects and artefacts, and some odd and obscure items
that presumably meant something to someone once but whose stories were now lost
and forgotten. To a young Drood like me, they were all wonderfully interesting
and fascinating, with their hints of a much bigger world outside the Hall. I
spent a lot of time here as a child, leafing through the books and playing with
the pieces. At least partly because I knew I wasn’t supposed to. I was still
fond of a lot of the exhibits, so I was careful not to break anything else as I
made my way across the room. I pointed out a few of my favourites to Molly.
"That’s the skull of a vodyanoi from pre-Soviet Russia. Those
are genuine Thuggee strangling cords from the Hindu Kush. That lumpy-looking
hairy thing is a badly stuffed Chupacabras from Chile. Which if anything smells
worse dead than it does when it’s alive. And all the intricate carvings in that
cabinet are scrimshaw carved from the bones of a great white whale."
"You should charge admittance to the Hall," said Molly. "You
could make a fortune out of the summer trade."
The door ahead of us slammed open and my grandmother Martha
Drood, the family Matriarch herself, strode into the room to face me,
accompanied as always by her consort, Alistair. I stopped abruptly, facing them,
and they stopped where they were, maintaining a cautious distance. Molly moved
in close beside me, reassuring and supporting me with her presence. I was glad
she was there. Even after all that had happened, after all that I’d
discovered…Martha was still the Matriarch, the will and authority of the Droods.
And once I would have died rather than fail her.
The Matriarch wasn’t wearing her armour. Of course not. That
might have come across as an admission of weakness, and Martha’s arrogance would
never allow her to see me as a serious threat. Not even after all I’d done. For
a rogue to triumph against the will of the family was unthinkable.
So I armoured down too. Just to show my contempt.
"Hello, Grandmother," I said. "Alistair. How did you know where
to find me?"
Alistair smirked. "Intercepting your path wasn’t exactly
difficult, Edwin. All we had to do was follow the wreckage and destruction, draw
a straight line to the Sanctity, and then get here ahead of you."
"You always were very direct, even as a child," said the
Matriarch.
"That’s why I chose this room, for our…little chat. The number
of times I had to send someone to drag you out of here because you weren’t where
you were supposed to be…You always were such a disappointment to me, Edwin."
Molly looked at me. "It’s your family, Edwin. How do you want to
handle this?"
"Very carefully," I said. "My grandmother wouldn’t be in here,
facing me without serious backup, unless she was confident she had some really
nasty cards to play."
"This is the Drood Matriarch?" said Molly. "Well, colour me
impressed. The queen bitch of the family that runs the whole world.
Hatchet-faced old cow, isn’t she?"
The Matriarch ignored her, fixing me with her cold gaze. "Where
is James?" she said harshly. "What did you do to James?"
"I…killed him, Grandmother," I said.
She cried out briefly then; a lost, devastated sound. She
crumpled as though I’d hit her and might have fallen if Alistair hadn’t been
there to hold her up. She pressed her face against his chest, eyes squeezed shut
to keep the tears from falling. Alistair glared at me over her bent head. I
wanted to see her suffer for what she’d done to me, to all of us, even to Uncle
James, but in the end it was disturbing and even sad to see such a legendary
facade crack and fall apart right in front of me. I’d never seen her show any
honest emotion in public before.
"You killed my son," she said finally, pushing herself away from
Alistair. "My son…your uncle…He was the best of us! How could you, Edwin?"
"You sent him to his death, Grandmother," I said steadily. "Just
like you tried to send me to mine on the motorway. Remember?"
I stepped forward to confront her with all the other things I
had to say, but to my surprise Alistair stepped forward to face me, putting
himself between his wife and the rogue who threatened her. He stood tall and
proud, doing his best to stare me down, and for the first time, he actually
looked like a Drood.
"Get out of my way, Alistair," I said.
"No." His voice was high but steady. He had no authority, no
power, and he knew it, but in his refusal to remove himself from the line of
fire, he had a kind of dignity at last. "I won’t let you hurt her anymore."
"I don’t want to hurt her," I said almost tiredly. "I don’t want
to hurt anyone. That’s not why I came back. But I have something important to do
and not much time to do it in. Take her out of here, Alistair."
"No. This ends here."
"I have Oath Breaker," I said. "And Molly has Torc Cutter. Even
the Gray Fox couldn’t stand against that."
"You used Torc Cutter on your own uncle?" Alistair looked at me
with horror. "Dear God; what have you become, Edwin?"
"I don’t know," I said honestly. "Awake, perhaps, to all the
lies and betrayals…It’s time to cut the rotten heart out of the family."
"I have a weapon too," Alistair said abruptly, and just like
that there was an old-fashioned pistol in his right hand. It would have looked
primitive, even pathetic, if I hadn’t recognised it. If I hadn’t known it for
what it was. Alistair nodded grimly, seeing the knowledge in my face. Even
Martha was shaken out of her grief by the sight of the gun.
"Alistair! Wherever did you get that? You can’t use it! I forbid
it!"
"I’ll do whatever I have to to protect you, Martha." Alistair
was looking at me, but the gun was trained steadily on Molly. "You stand very
still, Edwin. Or I’ll hurt your woman, just as you’ve hurt mine. I know none of
you ever really thought of me as one of the family. Never thought I had it in me
to fight the good fight like the rest of you. But I love this family and all it
stands for, just as I’ve always loved you, Martha. And this is where I prove
it."
"Please, Alistair," said Martha, trying for a calm and
reasonable voice.
"Put away the gun. Let me handle this."
"How can you love the family?" I said to Alistair. "Knowing what
you do about the Heart? About the price we pay to be what we are?"
He frowned, suddenly uncertain. "Martha? What’s he talking
about?"
I looked at Martha. "He doesn’t know, does he, Grandmother? You
never told him. Never told him why he can’t ever wear the golden torc."
"He’s not part of the council," she said dully. "He never needed
to know, so I never told him. It would have been…cruel. You always were too
softhearted, Alistair."
"Not here, not now," he said. "Not when he dares to threaten you
and the whole family. You do know what this gun is, don’t you, Edwin? Of course
you do. Why don’t you tell your little witch friend what it is?"
"Yes, Eddie," said Molly. "You know I hate to be left out of
things."
"That…is a Salem Special," I said. "It’s a witch killer. It
shoots flames summoned up from Hell itself. Or so the records say. No one’s used
the awful thing in centuries." I glared at Alistair. "I can’t believe you’re
even thinking of using a Salem Special. You put your soul at risk just by
handling it."
"It’ll stop you, and that’s all that matters," he said. He
smiled briefly, nervously. "Fight fire with fire, eh? Oh, I know it won’t hurt
you, Eddie. You’ll get your armour up in time to protect you. But it’ll do
terrible things to your pretty girlfriend…So you’re going to stand very still,
Edwin, until the rest of the family get here, take your weapons away, and put
you under arrest. Or I’ll burn your woman alive before your eyes."