Darwen Arkwright and the School of Shadows (11 page)

“Let me look it up,” said Alex, thumbing through the notebook from the map room. “No way!” she exclaimed.

“What?” asked Darwen, who was considering a fractured statue of a girl hanging a picture frame a little outside the portal ring.

“This goes right to the Great Apparatus!” she exclaimed. “Perfect. We can be home before anyone misses us.”

“But we haven't made any new allies or learned anything about where Mr. Peregrine might be,” said Darwen, splaying his fingers and holding up his hands in exasperation.

Alex looked at the shattered columns on the ground. “We should leave,” she said. “Before Greyling's uglies come back.”

“I think they're done here,” said Darwen.

“This portal might be okay,” said Rich, studying one of the marble columns. “I need to reconnect these wires, but otherwise it looks usable.”

“I don't like it,” said Eileen. “Why would they leave one intact? Either wherever it leads isn't worth visiting, or it's a trap.”

“Not necessarily,” said Rich, stripping a wire with his teeth. “The scrobblers aren't exactly careful workmen. They may not have realized how easy this was to fix. There.” He pushed a button and the portal shimmered into life. “See? Good as new.”

“I don't know,” said Eileen warily. “Seems like taking an unnecessary risk.”

Everyone looked at Darwen, waiting, and he considered the flickering light of the portal thoughtfully. A part of him just wanted to go home, but he knew in his heart that he couldn't do that. Not yet.

“Yes, it's risky,” he said. “But we have a job to do. And if it doesn't look like we're going to find anything useful . . .”

“Or if it looks too dangerous,” Alex chipped in.

“We'll get out fast,” Darwen concluded. “Okay?”

Eileen looked ready to protest, but she glanced at the others and snatched Rich's hand, stepping into the portal with a muttered “Fine.”

And for a moment, it looked like it was.

A Cold Reception

T
he temperature dropped
to freezing. A howling wind whipped at their hair and clothes and they immediately turned against it, their feet crunching in deep, crystalline snow.

To his left, Darwen saw black, leafless trees and then only an expanse of open, snow-covered land running to where wrinkles of blue ice rose up like something between a mountain and a frozen waterfall.

“That's a glacier, that is,” said Rich. “Cool.”

“Probably,” said Alex, dry as a bone, but Darwen just nodded, smiling and hugging his arms to his chest. The place was—in a wild and chilly way—quite beautiful. He was considering the glacier when something large moved between the trees, something big enough to momentarily blot out everything beyond it entirely, but pale and formless as the empty sky.

“Whoa,” he exclaimed. “Did you see that?”

“There was
something
,” said Alex.

Eileen checked her blaster anxiously.

“Where?” asked Rich, stamping his feet in the snow. “I didn't see anything. In those trees?”

And then there was another one moving in the same direction, vast and slow. Rich gaped. “Dang.”

The huge creatures were the size of double-decker buses. They were white and hung with shaggy, matted fur, which blended so well into the snowy landscape that their precise shape was hard to make out. Each one had huge, curved tusks that looked like they were made of glass and a pair of similarly elephantine trunks that swept the ground as they walked. In the middle of their towering backs, the beasts had a pair of camel humps, and between those humps, sitting astride each creature, was something like a small man, wrapped and hooded in white fur.

As Darwen watched, the immense creatures swung around to face them and doubled their speed.

“Mutant mammoths,” whispered Alex, her breath pluming like fog. “Will they spear us to death on their tusks or just trample us into little red pancakes? I, for one, can't wait to find out.”

“Dulovune herders,” sighed Eileen. “That's just great. No wonder Greyling didn't bother disabling the portal properly.”

“Why?” asked Darwen quickly. “What are they?”

“Let's just say that they like to be left alone,” said Eileen, her eyes flashing from the massive beasts to the men who sat astride them. “And because of what happens when people don't leave them alone, everyone generally does. We should leave. Now.”

Five of the huge animals and their riders pushed through the trees, snapping heavy branches as they came on. The lead mammoth seemed to reach back with its trunks, one to each side, and then stretch them forward again like cannons.

“Run or fight?” asked Rich.

The mammoth took their decision out of their hands. It seemed to inflate slightly, and then from the extended trunks came a jet of aquamarine fire that arced over their heads and pooled on the ground a few yards behind them. Rich and Alex cried out and ducked.

“I think we stay where we are,” said Darwen. “We're trying to make friends, remember?” As the others sputtered their doubts, he took a step toward the lead beast and raised his arms in the air.

“Yo, D,” said Alex. “Much as I like the new decisive you—very impressive and all—I'd prefer to see you making decisions like what you want for lunch rather than, you know, stuff that might get us all killed horribly.”

“My name is Darwen Arkwright,” Darwen called, ignoring her, gazing up into the still-smoking trunks the mammoth had aimed directly at him, “and I come as envoy from the Guardian Council.”

The five colossal white mammoths formed a loose semicircle around Darwen and the others, their twin trunks extended with obvious menace.

Up close they really were immense, and it was clear that if the huge animals took so much as a few sudden steps, Darwen and the others would all be crushed. They also stank like a barnyard on a hot day, a smell so powerful that Darwen actually took a step backward and covered his mouth. He turned to get a breath of air, glancing behind him to where the torrent of blue fire had left a smoking hole in the snow, then forced himself to look back at the mammoths and their riders.

Behind each rider was a complex array of crates, bags, and barrels, all wood but bound in copper. The barrels seemed to contain whatever flammable liquid the dulovune—to use Eileen's term—had shot at them. He could smell it now, a sharp gasoline aroma just discernible over the musky stench coming off the shaggy white beasts. Alex made a gagging noise, but Darwen didn't dare turn to stare her into silence. The riders all wore some kind of veil bound tight over their noses. Darwen got another whiff of the mammoth's potent odor and decided he couldn't blame them.

To Darwen's relief, Alex seemed to get the message all by herself. For a long moment, no one said a word, the tension as sharp and cold as the wind. The dulovunes' eyes were barely visible beneath the masses of thick hair, but their mouths moved constantly, a slow cow-like chewing that left ropes of spit trailing to the ground. Their double trunks were fitted with a device at the end of which burned a tiny bluish flame.

The dulovunes' riders were no taller than Darwen, but they looked wild. Their skin was a rich purple that seemed to shift in the light, like tiny fish scales, and their long copper-colored hair fell about their shoulders like coarse wire. Beneath their furs they wore body armor fashioned, Darwen guessed, from the shaved skin of their mounts. At their waists they carried ivory knives of strange, irregular shapes. They sat quite still, their black eyes boring into Darwen's, saying nothing.

“Er . . . hi,” said Darwen, who was trying not to stare at the mammoths' glassy tusks, each ending in needle-sharp points.

The riders didn't utter a word, but one of the mammoths shook its pale head and a clump of snow fell from its fur.

“Hi?”
muttered Alex. “Really? You figure that's how the secretary of state addresses the United Nations?
Hi?
”

“Shh,” said Eileen. “Let him talk.”

“My name is Darwen Arkwright,” said Darwen, flustered into repeating himself, “and I am the mirroculist.”

This time the riders did respond, their bodies tightening as they shifted in their saddles. Two of them exchanged slow, even glances.

“What is that to us?” said the lead rider at last. He spoke reluctantly and his faced creased into a sour frown, as if the very act of using words left an unpleasant taste in his mouth. English was clearly not his first language.

“War is coming,” said Darwen, relieved that he could make himself understood at all. “I come on behalf of the Guardians to stand against Greyling. Can we count on your support?”

“You sound like a door-to-door salesman,” muttered Alex, her eyes cast down. “You are trying, right now, to stop him from killing us, not trying to sell him magazine subscriptions.”

Darwen shot her an irritated glance, but he knew she was right. The mammoth rider was continuing to stare silently down at him from inside his fur-lined hood.

“Greyling is destroying Silbrica,” Darwen tried, trying not to show how much the biting cold was getting to him. “We have seen what he is doing to other loci,” he explained, thinking of Moth's mutilated forest. “You can't ignore it.”

A soft grunting sound came from the riders. It took Darwen a moment to realize that they were laughing.

“We can,” said the leader, “and we will. Other loci mean nothing to us. We are secure. We are alone. None enters here without our permission—permission you do not have. Go back the way you came and bother us no more. Or face the consequences.”

“You don't understand,” Darwen began. “If you don't take our side, you may as well take Greyling's and even if he leaves you alone for a little while—”

It happened with astonishing speed, cutting Darwen off mid-sentence.

Three of the riders hopped over the heads of their mounts. Each mammoth instinctively lowered one trunk so that its rider could slide deftly to the ground, while the other trunk stayed aimed at Darwen and his friends. By the time the riders hit the ground, they had all readied a spear-like weapon whose tip had a cluster of lethal-looking points, all of which pulsed with electricity.

Cattle prods
, thought Darwen, judging by the look of them. These, though, were bigger and probably packed a serious punch, assuming the spear points didn't just skewer you on the spot. Instinctively he raised his hands and took a step backward. The others did the same.

The wind gusted, blowing snowflakes in his face, but Darwen kept his gaze focused on the lead herder, who was staring in frigid silence. When Darwen opened his mouth to say something—anything—those three spears flinched, ready to strike home. With his arms still raised in surrender, he began walking silently back toward the portal.

“Next time,” said the herder, his voice raised over the storm, “there will be no
conversation
.” He said that last word as if it was particularly distasteful and pointed his spear meaningfully to underscore the threat.

Darwen just shook his head, then led the others through the portal.

“Okay,” said Alex as they reached the columns and formal gardens on the other side. “That went well. When he hears of our diplomatic skill, Greyling will be shaking in his boots.”

“Always helpful, Alex,” said Rich.

“Well,” she said, “at least we can breathe the air here. Man, those things
stank
! I don't know why they bother with weapons. The funk could knock down a grown man at fifty paces. No wonder no one wants to go there.”

Alex stepped toward the portal that led back to the Great Apparatus. But before she could go through, Darwen interrupted her.

“Did you look at that one, Rich?” he asked, indicating the fractured statue of the girl in the process of hanging a picture frame in midair. One of her marble arms and half her face had been smashed off, but the picture frame itself was apparently intact, as were the controls that studded one edge of the frame. It was set a little apart from the others, but it was clearly a portal. “I noticed it before but didn't look at it closely. Kind of small, but it seems to be still in one piece, right, Rich?”

“I thought we were going home?” said Alex.

“But we're looking for clues and, you know, allies,” said Darwen. “Maybe we should try this one.”

“Are you forgetting the great white stink beasts that just threatened to flatten us if we so much as put a foot in their locus again?” asked Alex.

“No,” Darwen returned, feeling flustered. “I just don't think that everyone we find will want to electrocute us. Some of them will know what Greyling is, what he's capable of. They'll join us.”

“You sure about that, man?” asked Alex. “Because we have no idea what's on the other side of that portal. None at all. It could be worse. We can't just go into random loci blind, Darwen. We need to go back, talk to the Guardians or Weazen or someone and choose places where we think we'll make some real progress. Picking portals at random is . . .”

“What?” Darwen demanded angrily. “Stupid?”

“I was gonna say risky,” said Alex. “Dangerous, even.”

“Which
means
stupid,” said Darwen.

“No, it doesn't,” said Alex, not backing down. “But whatever. You're just mad because we're not getting anywhere and you feel like it's your fault.”

“And maybe saving Silbrica is starting to look a little dangerous to you so you'd rather go home,” said Darwen, giving her a hard look.

Alex put her hands on her hips and glared at him.

“Ex
cuse
me?” she said. “You sayin' I'm a coward or something, Darwen Arkwright? Because I will slap you upside the head, so help me Jesus.”

“He's not saying that,” Rich inserted, turning from the broken statue and looking anxiously at him. “Right, Darwen? You're not.”

Darwen took a breath and closed his eyes for a moment. Even through his irritation he guessed that she was right. He was annoyed by their lack of progress and was taking it out on her.

“No,” he said at last. “I'm not saying that.”

“Well, all right then,” said Alex, relaxing a little.

“It's late,” said Eileen wearily. “I think Alex is right. We should go home for tonight.”

Darwen bit his lip but said nothing, trying not to show how much his failure hurt.

“Okay,” said Rich. “We can come back tomorrow. Yeah, Darwen?”

“Yeah,” said Darwen, very quietly.

Darwen barely spoke again for the remainder of the journey back to the Great Apparatus and up the chute to his bedroom. He was still avoiding Alex's eyes when they rode the elevator down with Eileen.

“See you at school,” said Rich, trying to make up for the fact that no one else was talking.

Darwen just nodded.