Ammonia moved forward to stand before William, and to his credit he didn’t flinch. She looked into his eyes.
“Interesting. I’m getting . . . absolutely nothing from him. As though he were a psychic null, like my Peter. And it’s not only his torc protecting him. Someone has placed very powerful blocks inside this man’s mind.”
“Can you break through them without damaging him?” I said.
“Can you stop talking about him as though he wasn’t here!” said William.
“No problem,” said Ammonia. “Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy. That’s why you hired me.” She looked back at William and gave him what she probably thought of as a reassuring smile. “I need you calm and relaxed. Sitting in your favourite chair, perhaps. Do you have a favourite chair?”
“Of course,” said Ioreth. “I’ll go and get it, shall I? Yes. Don’t talk about me while I’m gone. I’m really very nervous.”
He hurried off and quickly came back with a sagging overstuffed armchair so heavy he couldn’t pick it up, but had to push it along in front of him as fast as the squealing and protesting castors would allow. He pushed it into place, and then leaned on the back breathing heavily, to show how much effort he was making on our behalf. William sank into the chair and arranged himself until he was as comfortable as he was going to get. Ammonia was surprisingly patient with him, until it became clear he was never going to stop wriggling about.
“Will you bloody well relax!” said Ammonia. “I am not the bloody dentist!”
“Don’t like him either,” said William. “Is this going to hurt?”
“Probably not physically,” said Ammonia.
William started to get back up out of his chair, and Ioreth and I had to step forward and push him back into it. William subsided and scowled at Ammonia.
“I demand a second opinion!”
“All right,” said Ammonia. “You’re a Drood and I despise everything you stand for. Now shut up and let me concentrate.”
I was expecting her to go into some kind of trance, or wave her hands about, or at least have her eyes light up; but there was nothing of the dramatic about what she did. She stood there before the Librarian, frowning thoughtfully, holding his gaze with hers. He stared back at her blankly, as though waiting for the real scanning to begin. Suddenly, I realised that the temperature in the Old Library was dropping. It’s mostly maintained at a little more than comfortably warm, for the sake of the books; but now it was growing distinctly chilly. As though something were sucking all the heat out of the Library. Even the light seemed dimmer than before. Shadows slowly filled the stacks around us, until we were all standing in the only real pool of light left. Everything was still and silent, the whole Library’s attention focused in one place. William’s face was entirely blank now, his gaze unblinking and far away.
“I’m past the shields,” said Ammonia. Her voice was quite calm and matter-of-fact. She might have been talking about her shopping. “A lot of really nasty protections here . . . Nothing I couldn’t handle. I’m inside his head now. His thoughts are a mess. His memories have been heavily interfered with; whole chunks are missing, destroyed. Quite deliberately. There are things he discovered, truths he was never meant to know, that someone didn’t want him to ever be able to think about again. But there’s more to it than that. Whole sections of his mind have been placed off-limits; he doesn’t even know they’re there. More shields, more protections . . . high walls with barbed wire on the top . . . What are you trying to hide from me, William? Or what has someone been hiding from you all these years? What’s hiding inside your head?”
William’s face suddenly exploded with emotion, contorting with rage and hatred and a vicious malevolence. He didn’t look like William anymore. It was as though someone else were using his face for a mask, looking out through his eyes and hating everyone it saw. It glared threateningly at Ammonia, who stared calmly back at him.
“Well, well, what have I woken up? Who are you?”
“Get out! You don’t belong here! You have no business being here! Get out or I’ll kill you! I’ll kill all of you!”
But for all the evil in that face, and the venom in the voice, William didn’t move a muscle in his chair.
“That . . . doesn’t sound like William,” said Ioreth.
“It isn’t,” said Ammonia, still apparently entirely calm. “There’s someone else living inside this man’s head, inside his mind, his thoughts. Not a complete person or personality, as such; more like a residue . . . left behind by whatever assaulted his mind all those years ago. Something implanted, left to grow . . . A seed! Yes, a psychic seed! Hidden so deep within him he didn’t even know it was there. The seed has been infiltrating his mind slowly but surely, like a parasite. Eating him up a little at a time, replacing him with itself.”
“It’s the Heart,” I said. My stomach was churning painfully, and my hands were clenched into fists. “It’s the Heart, isn’t it? I always knew it had done something awful to him.”
“Yes,” said Ammonia, nodding slowly. “William didn’t run away from the Hall and his family; he was driven out. Sent into exile, commanded to hide himself where no one else would look, so his family would never discover what had been done to him. It made William its last-chance bolt-hole, hiding the smallest part of itself deep within this man’s mind. So that if anything should ever happen to the Heart, it could grow back again. From the safety of William’s mind.”
“Like a witch, hiding her heart somewhere safe?” I said.
“Same principle, yes,” said Ammonia. “William would have returned to the Hall at some point. He’d been programmed to do everything necessary to bring about the rebirth of the Heart. Eventually it would have burst out of him like some evil moth from its human cocoon, and your family would never have seen it coming.” She looked thoughtfully at William, spitting and snarling at her from his chair. “The Heart . . . must have had some kind of premonition. Extradimensional entities often don’t perceive time in our limited, linear fashion. Either that or it was warned by the traitor in your family. Still sure you don’t want me to look into that?”
“Stick to William,” I said. “Look, the Heart is dead. I saw it die. I killed it!”
“Not all of it,” said Ammonia. “You destroyed its physical form . . . destroyed its power over you and your family. I’m impressed. Really. But given enough time, the seed inside this man’s mind would have grown into a new Heart. Probably not in William’s lifetime, or yours. It would have gone on hopping from mind to mind and digging in deep, concealing itself like an invisible parasite, growing stronger with every generation. Reaching out with its increasing mental skills, influencing your family’s thoughts, affecting their decisions, pushing them in the right direction . . . and they’d never even know it was happening. Until the Heart was finally ready to manifest in the material world again, and retake control of the Drood family.”
“Why didn’t Ethel detect this?” I said. My mouth was dry, and my voice wasn’t as steady as I would have liked.
“Good question,” said Ammonia. “Presumably the Heart knows how to hide itself from its own kind. Probably it intended to attack your Ethel from ambush, destroy her and take her place. A very clever plan. Might well have worked, if you hadn’t called me in. But then, you never met a mind like me.”
William stood up suddenly, and then kept rising up until he was levitating in midair, above his chair. He hung there unsupported, completely at ease, glaring down at Ammonia with a terrible cold malice. His face didn’t look human anymore, as though what was on the other side were pushing through. Strange energies formed out of nowhere, swirling in the air in thick black blotches, spitting and crackling as they discharged on the material plane. Bits of the dark world called through to keep their master company. I started to armour up, and then stopped as I looked at Ammonia. She was staring up at the levitating man, entirely unperturbed. She seemed to know what she was doing, and this was her show, so . . . I decided to wait and see what she could do. I gestured to Ioreth not to armour up, and he nodded reluctantly.
“You’re showing off now,” said Ammonia. She hadn’t budged an inch. “Come down from there, and get back into that chair. Don’t make me come up there and get you.”
Their eyes locked. Nothing obvious happened, but the air seemed colder than ever. There was a growing tension in the Old Library. It felt like . . . there were a lot more than four people present. It felt like the four of us were standing on a great dark plain, while two massive forces clashed together, battling savagely without restraint or mercy. And then, very slowly, inch by inch, William dropped back down into his chair. The dark energies slowly dissipated, while long trails of static ran up and down the bookshelves. William was so stiff, so motionless now, he barely seemed alive. His face was flushed red with rage, his eyes glaring malignantly. His mouth was stretched wide in an almost animal snarl as the thing inside him fought for every inch of psychic ground.
“Don’t be too impressed,” said Ammonia. “All of that was sound and fury, preprogrammed defence routines. Just mental attack dogs. Bad dogs!”
Oily black smoke burst out of William’s mouth and nostrils, forming into thick clouds and streamers in the air before us. It twisted and shuddered like some horrible black ectoplasm, taking on the shape of a vast demonic face hanging in the air between William and Ammonia. It had horns and teeth, and it wept thick black tears that fell to steam and hiss on the bare floorboards. Ammonia laughed right into the demonic face, and inhaled sharply. The face abruptly lost all shape and structure as Ammonia breathed it in, every last bit of it. When it was all gone, she smacked her lips briefly.
“Tasty . . .” said Ammonia Vom Acht.
“I can’t help feeling I should be contributing something,” I said.
“You are,” said Ammonia. “If I look like I’m losing, kill me.”
And then we all retreated a step, even Ammonia, as a brilliant light flared up before us, incandescent, blinding. And when the light fell back to a bearable level, a huge diamond shape had formed around William and his chair, encasing the Librarian completely. He was only a vague image now, inside a huge multifaceted diamond. The Heart had taken on its true form again. Nowhere near as big as it had once been, when it dominated the Sanctity in Drood Hall. When we all worshipped and adored it, because most of us didn’t know any better. The diamond blazed with a fierce cold light that chilled my flesh and shuddered in my soul. My new torc tingled sharply at my throat, warning me. I moved forward, very cautiously, and rapped one shining facet with a knuckle. It felt very real, and very cold.
“It’s the Heart!” I said to Ammonia. “It’s back!”
“No, it isn’t!” Ammonia said immediately. “This is just a memory, a projection, given shape and form by the sheer power locked within the seed. This is good, Drood! We’re forcing it to use up that power, to fight us and defend itself. Manifesting in the material world like this, to defend its host from me, takes a hell of a lot of energy. It’ll eat itself up . . . if we can last long enough.”
“Should I armour up?” I said. “Try to smash the diamond so we can free William?”
“Don’t be a fool, Drood! At this stage, an attack on the physical diamond would be an attack on the host. The seed’s still a part of your Librarian. The psychic feedback would almost certainly kill him!”
“Then give me another option!” I said. “But don’t take too long. We can’t risk letting the Heart seize control of the family again. William would rather die than let that happen. Anything for the family.”
“You Droods are always so keen to die for your precious causes,” said Ammonia. “Why don’t you try finding one to live for?”
The light from the diamond was pulsing fiercely now, like a heartbeat, filling the Old Library with its unnatural glare. It seemed to be growing stronger. Ioreth and I were both shielding our eyes with our arms. Ammonia narrowed her eyes, but didn’t look away. She stood still, glaring into the light, bristling with her own fierce energy.
“This is a psychic attack,” she said. “Not material. I can hear the seed. It’s trying to talk to me, now that it knows it’s been detected. It’s offering me things, promising me all kinds of things, but that’s a distraction. It’s trying to sneak past my defences so it can invade my mind and take control of my powers. Smart little seed . . . And the really bad news is, I’m not sure I can stop it without attacking it head-on. Which could kill William. The Heart is powerful. So inhumanly powerful. I’m good, but I’m still only human; and the Heart isn’t bound by human limitations.”
“Neither is my armour,” I said.
I subvocalised the activating Words, and my golden armour swept over me in a moment. I felt stronger, sharper and ready to rock. The diamond’s fiercely glowing light was nothing to my armoured mask. Ioreth followed my lead, and another gleaming golden figure appeared in the Old Library. Ammonia actually fell back a step. It is not an easy thing to see a Drood take on his armour and his power. A great cry of rage filled the Old Library as the Heart saw Droods in armour not of its making. I stepped forward and placed a golden hand flat on the shimmering facets of the diamond, and Ioreth quickly followed suit. Even through the strange matter covering my hand, I could feel the terrible strength of the Heart, pulsing like a living thing. I reached out with my mind, trying to contact William through his torc, but the diamond blocked me. I could feel Ioreth trying, too, and together we slowly forced our way in, until we could feel William’s presence inside the diamond. Ioreth and I said the activating Words together, and William said them along with us.
The Heart cried out again as golden strange matter welled out of William’s torc and encased him from head to toe: a golden figure inside the shining diamond. The light flared up again, almost unbearable now even through my mask, as the Heart seed fought to hold on to its host. William fought to move, and we fought to reach him, but even linked together the three of us weren’t strong enough to shatter the diamond. We were strong enough to keep the seed from jumping out of William and into Ammonia, but nowhere near strong enough to destroy it. Because in the end we were only three men in armour, and it was an other-dimensional entity from someplace we couldn’t even imagine. We’d fought the seed to a standstill; but even that wouldn’t last for long.