Mirrorscape (27 page)

‘You're an
artist
?' said Mel.

‘Green used to be my apprentice,' said the master, ‘just like you. Billet's in a bad way. I see you've brought the materials. They'll be a poor match against the iconium, but now at least we can try to fight back. Even if we fail, we'll have given a good account of ourselves. Swivel, set up the easels here. Brushes and oils next to them. Where're the colours? Womper, you didn't bring any colours.'

‘No, Master, we brought this instead.' Wren produced the small sack. ‘Lord Floris gave it to my father to give to you.'

The master took the proffered sack and eased the
drawstring to look inside. ‘Oh, my word! Lucas, look! More iconium!'

‘No one has seen it for hundreds of years and suddenly we seem to be awash with the stuff,' said Lucas Flink.

‘Now we're in with a real chance,' said the master. ‘To work! All of you.'

Swivel set up the five easels with blank canvases, while Ambrosius Blenk divided up the iconium into equal portions.

‘I'm not about to let you have all the fun this time around, Lucas.'

‘Please don't rub it in, Ambrosius,' said Lucas Flink.

‘How about you, Green?' asked the master. ‘Are you up for this?'

‘Iconium? Just try and stop me.'

‘I'm sorry, young lady,' said the master. ‘There are not enough easels or brushes for you.'

Wren smiled bravely to conceal her disappointment. ‘I think this work calls for real masters and apprentices.'

Once it was shared out, there was much less of the pigment than Mel had supposed. ‘There seems
barely enough for one good monster each.'

‘As long as they
are
good monsters, it's all we'll need,' said Ludo.

‘Right. Lucas, Green, Womper, Cleef. An easel apiece, I think.' The master handed them a brush each.

Mel looked at his canvas, the brush in his hand and the iconium. He was about to paint the most important picture of his life with the rarest of pigments, alongside two of the greatest artists who had ever lived.
Mum and Dad, this is for you
.
And Fa Theum
. He had his picture already worked out in his head. He held his brush poised over the iconium.

Then he lowered it. ‘Here, Wren, you take my place. Groot's got lots more iconium than we have. We're never going to match him monster for monster. If I can't steal his supply, then I can at least destroy it.'

‘You can't go back out there.'

‘I must. It's the only way to even things up.'

‘Then let me go. The best artists are needed here.'

‘You're one of the best artists. Besides, I've unfinished business with Groot.'

He dashed from the library.

‘Be careful, Mel,' said Wren to the empty doorway. ‘Be careful.'

Mel had just made it to the cover of the nearest giant head when it began. From the mouth of the massive baby flew a host of monsters. They were horrifying, but Mel could see they were sloppily imagined and imperfect. Groot was obviously drunk. Mel retraced his steps until he was abreast of the baby again. The giant illusion of the baby was vanishing before his eyes. Its creator could no longer be bothered to renew the small image on canvas that maintained the phantasm.

Then there came cries of alarm from Lord Brool's pavilion as smoke billowed and flames blossomed. Blue and his men were beginning their attack. Mel watched as the tall man said something to Groot and ran through the fading image of the baby, back towards the camp.

‘It's just you and me now, Groot. And pretty soon there'll just be me.' Mel felt in his doublet and withdrew his bodkin. He stood up straight and
walked towards the head apprentice.

‘Groot.
Enough!
'

Billet was beyond fighting back. He was visibly crumbling away, and it was all he could do to remain upright. His cries of defiance now sounded like creaking timbers and falling rubble, the words lost in a chaos of decrepitude.

A ghoulish croak split the air as a new creature approached. A great toad-like apparition with evil, hooded eyes swooped towards them on green, webbed wings, its back poxed with poisonous warts. Immediately, Lucas Flink counter-attacked with a writhing mega-serpent that encircled the attacker. The toad-creature burst apart like an overripe melon and the air was filled with flying gobbets of flesh and milky strands of toad spawn, the black embryos within stirring menacingly. They landed on Billet and burst forth. Thousands of newborn tadpole-monsters with fat, rasping tongues tore chunks from the house as Billet began to dissolve like a sugar cube in hot tea.

Ludo's and Wren's inventive creations – a heron
headed crab and a voracious parrot-fish – attacked the tiny tadpoles, destroying them by the dozen. Hundreds of the squirming creatures were wiped out, but even more remained and continued the relentless assault as they visibly grew into toadlets. They swarmed over the crocodilian creature Green had created, smothering it by sheer numbers.

Ambrosius Blenk's riposte was in the form of a giant, rainbow-hued hummingbird. It hovered in the air next to Billet, its wings noisy blurs, picking off the attackers with its long bill and sticky tongue. The desert below was fanned into towering dust-devils by the downdraft. But even this inspired conception was inadequate to tackle the sheer number of Groot's creatures. A great many invaded the wreck of the library, where the fierce turbulence of the humming-bird's wings whipped them into their own darkly swirling vortex amid a storm of paper from ruined books. Within this miniature tornado, the toadlets fused and combined with one another until a new and powerful monster dominated the remains of the room, with an ovoid toad head attached to massive shoulders
covered in toxic carbuncles. Powerful arms ended in webbed claws. Its pot-bellied torso was supported on two legs with fat, amphibian thighs and splayed feet. Its black tongue darted in and out.

‘The iconium's spent,' shouted the master. ‘Everyone back to the barricade. Where have those angels got to now?'

‘If you'll permit me?' Swivel, cutting torch redeployed, shielded the master and his companions but was effortlessly brushed aside by one swipe of the monster's powerful arm. He lay in the corner twitching, his many faces swivelling out of control.

The creature's predatory instinct was to go for the weakest and it seized the injured rebel leader. Green swung his sword but this was snapped like matchwood by the monster, which shook him as if he were a child's plaything.

‘
No!
' cried Ludo as he climbed on to the barricade. ‘Let him go!'

‘Ludo, don't!' screamed Wren.

‘I must. Everyone's suffered enough because of me.' He leapt and encircled the creature's neck and they
whirled around in a macabre dance. Some of the carbuncles burst under him and the acidic poison they released burnt through his doublet. Crying with pain, he hung on and his fingers scrabbled over the toad's face, clawing deeply at its eyes. The toad-monster howled with pain and dropped Green. It spun round, smashing Ludo against the library wall.

Still the apprentice clung on, tormenting the apparition with his probing fingers. As the beast attempted to rid itself of Ludo, the wall cracked and rubble cascaded from the ceiling. Then the monster lurched backwards. The wall gave way and the creature, Ludo still clinging to it like a limpet, fell through the gap and plummeted to the desert floor.

‘Ludo!' Wren ran to the gaping hole and stared down. There, far below, lay the lifeless, spread-eagled body of the toad-creature. Of Ludo there was no sign. The master and Lucas Flink joined her.

‘Where's Cleef?' said the master as the monster began to fade.

‘There he is,' said Lucas Flink. As the dead creature grew more transparent they saw a terrible sight. Lying beneath it, mauled by the monster and shattered by the wall, lay the unmoving form of Ludo.

‘Ludo,' said Wren. ‘Oh, Ludo.'

… and Into the Fire

‘Groot.
Enough!
'

Inside the rapidly fading image of the baby, the head apprentice turned at the sound of Mel's shout. At first, his drunken eyes refused to focus. He blinked rapidly several times and looked harder. Wide-eyed, he dropped his palette and backed clumsily into the easel. The canvas toppled to the ground. So did the small chest. What little iconium was left disappeared into the desert sand, to be trampled underfoot as he fought for balance.

‘
Smell!
It can't be. You're … you're dead.' Groot put out a hand to steady himself. The easel fell and so did he.

Mel said not a word.

Groot scrambled to his feet. ‘Stay away from me.' He turned and fled.

Mel followed Groot across the burning camp and into Lord Brool's pavilion where he was met by a solid
wall of heat, as if he had walked into an oven. Anything that was not already burning freely was smoking. Overhead, the ceiling appeared to be made of a rippling mass of smoke.

Groot rushed, coughing, to one of the large paintings, its surface cracking and blistering in the heat. He made the mirrormark and pushed at the canvas, thinking that he could pass through it as easily as a door. He screamed with pain as the molten paint on the unyielding canvas stuck to his hand. He had chosen the wrong picture. He crossed to the other. Its surface was also beginning to bubble. He turned for one last look at Mel and, as he did so, the hem of his scarlet robe brushed the side of the tent and caught light. Groot tore it off and threw the blazing missile at Mel. Then he turned, made the mirrormark and vanished.

Disentangling himself from the burning robe, Mel made for the painting that had swallowed Groot. Its surface was now so badly blistered that it was impossible to discern what it depicted. No matter: Mel made the mirrormark.

He fell face down into soft snow. Blessed, cooling
snow. Coughing uncontrollably, he rolled over, extinguishing his smouldering clothes and soothing his burnt head. He grabbed a fistful of snow and brought it to his mouth, chasing away the acrid taste of smoke and soothing his scorched throat. For a moment more he lay there, enjoying the blissful, cleansing iciness. Then he heard a fluttering sound and felt a chill breeze on the back of his head, and he lifted it and looked around to get his bearings. Behind him, he could feel the heat coming off the wall of mist and through it the faint sounds of battle. As he rolled over, the wall of mist bubbled and disappeared. In its place was a seamless continuation of the silent, snowy scene all around. He knew then that the painting had at last been consumed in the flames on the far side. There was now no way back. If he was ever to get home, he would need to find another exit.

He moistened a corner of Groot's charred robe in the snow and used it to wipe his face. The icy shock temporarily banished his fatigue. He got unsteadily to his feet in the lightly falling snow. He did not need to guess which way Groot had gone. His footprints led off
into the distance as clearly as marks drawn on paper. Mel followed them with his eyes and saw a stumbling figure, black against the pristine whiteness, running as fast as the deep snow would allow. But there was more than one set of footprints. Several people had also escaped this way. Mel wrapped the remains of Groot's red robe around his neck as a scarf and set off to follow them across the too-perfect terrain of the Mirrorscape.

He soon lost sight of Groot, but continued to follow the trail. After a while, the tracks veered off to one side. Mel followed them until he found himself in front of a thick, impenetrable wall of thorns. The high hedge seemed impassable. Groot and whoever else he was tracking had evidently felt the same way, and the footprints set off in a new direction.

Presently, he arrived at a flat area that was obviously a frozen body of water. The footprints led out on to this but after a short distance stopped in a confusion of imprints next to a hole in the ice. Someone seemed to have fallen through. It could not have been too long ago as the surface had yet to refreeze completely. There was a flattened area nearby where someone had been hauled
out, evidently with some difficulty. Then the trail led off again back towards the shore and in yet another direction. After several of these random changes of course, Mel came to the conclusion that whoever he was tracking was hopelessly lost.

He began to feel hungry. The last thing he could remember eating was dinner with the phantasms of his parents.

Mel wished his friends were there with him now. Ludo would have something funny to say and Wren would have practical advice. With them by his side, his trek would be that much easier. But he was alone. He shivered.

Mel trudged on, following the footprints as they led into a wood. His breath formed pale clouds in the air in front of him as he laboured through the deep snow. A little way into the wood, Mel's attention was caught by a large, solitary icicle sparkling where it hung from a branch. He went closer. As he gazed at it, the colours refracted through it changed. The pure white of the snow and the blue of the shadows vanished as if a curtain had been
drawn over them. A curtain the colour of blood.

‘Lost are we, Smell?'

Mel's reaction was instantaneous. At the sound of the High-Bailiff's voice, he turned to flee but tumbled headlong over the body of the dwarf crouching directly behind him.

‘The oldest trick in the book and he fell for it, Mumchance. That's a joke, you may laugh.'

The tiny man blew an ululating trill on his whistle as he sat on his captive's back. He ripped off Mel's tabby sash, bound his hands tightly behind his back and dragged him to his feet. He patted him down and found the bodkin.

‘We've so looked forward to renewing Smell's acquaintance, haven't we, Mumchance? There's so much to catch up on. So much unfinished business. There's even a debt to be repaid. Repaid with interest. Of course, we don't have our Instruments of Interpellation, but we can always improvise. Why even a delicate thing like this icicle here,' the High-Bailiff snapped it off, ‘can work wonders in the right hands.' Adolfus Spute held the glistening point at Mel's eye.
The cold air between them was filled with clouds of condensation, Mel's coming rather more rapidly than his captor's. ‘What do you think, Mumchance? Up for a spot of improvisation, are we?'

The dwarf blew a questioning note on his whistle.

‘Do you really think so?' asked the High-Bailiff with surprise.

Another blast.

‘You know, that's not a bad idea. Not bad at all.' He looked Mel up and down with an appraising stare. ‘Come along, Smell. Things to do, people to see. No dilly-dallying.' He strode off through the snow, hitching up the hem of his long robe with one hand as he steadied himself with his multi-coloured staff of office. Mumchance followed behind, urging Mel forward with the bodkin.

A chill colder than the icy Mirrorscape ran through Mel's body. The first time he had encountered the High-Bailiff, Dirk Tot had saved him and the second, Green. Now he was on his own. All he could do was hope that an opportunity to escape presented itself. This thought sharpened his senses. He felt his mind
ease into the same state as when he drew, and he began to study his surroundings with his artist's eye.

He noticed at once that something had changed in the texture of the scenery around them. It was not very evident in the thick snow, but there was less detail to be seen in the Mirrorscape. It was the kind of simplification seen in the background of a painting. Even the light was different: it had stopped snowing and had grown darker. He was sure they had crossed into another painting. At one point there was a muffled thud behind them as snow fell from a high bough. A flapping of wings told Mel it had been dislodged by birds. Eventually, the wood thinned out and they looked down on to a natural hollow surrounded on all sides by jagged mountains. The sun was setting and the evening star was visible. Nestling in the lee of a rocky outcrop was a group of strange-looking buildings. Their exact shape was difficult to see, as they were draped in thick snow. As they approached, Mel could see yellow lamplight spilling from one on to the ground outside its door.

Adolfus Spute entered and Mumchance forced their
prisoner inside with the point of the dagger. As soon as his eyes had adjusted to the dim light, Mel could see that they were inside the frozen carcass of some huge animal, its ribs and backbone like the vaulting of a great building. At one end of the long space a fire had been built. Smoke snaked upwards and escaped through a hole in the ceiling. Incongruously, there was a table and two long benches. They seemed to be made from frozen entrails and discarded bones. Seated around it, close to the fire, was an obscenely fat man draped in the outer garments of the other two people, who sat shivering in their shirtsleeves nearby. One was hiccoughing repeatedly. A huge set of scarlet robes were propped in front of the fire, steaming as they dried.

The fat man sniffed loudly. ‘Ah, Spute, about time. And who's this?'

‘Introductions. Of course, how remiss of me.' Adolfus Spute bowed. ‘This is Lord Brool, the Lord-High-Master of the Fifth Mystery and his private secretary, Skim. I believe you are already acquainted with my nephew, Groot ….'

Groot sneered as he cradled his burnt hand.

‘… and, of course, my assistant and I need no introduction.'

‘Yes, Spute, very nicely done. But who's this?' asked the fat man impatiently.

‘This,' said the High-Bailiff with a theatrical flourish of his hand, ‘is
dinner
.'

‘
What?
' choked Mel.

‘There's not much of him.' Lord Brool eyed Mel up and down. ‘When I sent you out to trap something I was thinking more along the lines of a nice, juicy deer. That unintended dip in the lake has left me famished. Oh, well; if that's all there is on the menu. A leg for me, I think – and maybe the kidneys for garnish.'

Mel was dragged outside and Mumchance tied him to a tree. He drew Mel's bodkin from his belt and felt its edge. He seemed dissatisfied and held up one gloved finger as if to say
don't go away
and went towards a nearby rock. As he crouched down with his back to his prisoner, Mel could hear the ominous
shick-shick-shick
sound of the blade being sharpened.

Mel felt his last reserves of courage ebbing away. He could see the glow from inside the building growing
brighter and thick smoke issuing from the chimney as the fire was stoked. The sound of the sharpening knife grew more insistent. Mel struggled frantically against his bonds.

‘Stop fidgeting or I'll never get these knots undone.'

‘
Farris?
'

‘No, I'm Bathor. Farris is waiting up by the trees.'

‘Where did you two come from?'

‘We've been following you since we left Billet. Our master distinctly told us to stay close and to look after you. We thought you would have noticed. We made enough noise. Besides, we thought you might be up to some ….'

‘Devilry?'

‘Exactly. There, that's it. This way. We've found one of those walls of mist. It's up here.' Bathor led Mel up to some trees where Farris was waiting.

‘So you found him,' said Farris. ‘What kept you?'

A shrill whistle blast sounded behind them, followed by shouts from Groot and the others. The snow had drifted deeper here and Mel struggled to lift his feet higher and higher as they made their way uphill. He
was puffing loudly and great clouds of steam came from his mouth. He looked back. Mumchance and Lord Brool were having as much trouble with the deep drift as he was, but Adolfus Spute and the partially clothed figures of Groot and Skim had overtaken them and were gaining on him rapidly. Mel stumbled.

‘Oh humans.
Really
,' said Farris and Bathor in unison. They each grabbed one of Mel's arms and rose into the air. Their wings caused a mighty wind that fanned the snow into a blizzard in front of their pursuers, who cowered in the downdraft.

Mel felt exhilarated, but his flight was short and they soon landed in front of the wall of mist. With the angels still holding his arms, he formed the mirrormark in the air. There came the familiar sensation of tingling as the snowy world around them whirled and they were through.

They emerged into a strange space. A long gallery stretched away to the right and left, its wall hung with many paintings.

‘The pictures ….' said Farris.

‘They're leaking light,' said Bathor.

Light flooded the floor in front of the canvases and strange vegetation grew out of them. Water splashed from the pictures on to the floor and flowed away down the gallery. Suddenly, Mel recalled Green's warning about the Mirrorscape. ‘The seal's not permanent. After a few hundred years it breaks down.'

Mel said, ‘We must be in the oldest part of one of the Great Houses.'

‘What's that mean?' asked Farris.

‘The portal between the worlds is open ….'