The Eye of Zoltar (27 page)

‘Any good?’ I said to Addie.

‘They’re not fond of cash,’ she replied, ‘but I’ll try.’

‘Gorgeous Geraint the Great,’ said Addie, turning back to the warriors, ‘as weary travellers of limited means, we can offer only two thousand plotniks.’

The warriors all laughed uproariously.

‘We despise your abstract monetary concepts. Value should lie in the commodity, and not be assigned arbitrarily to a device of no intrinsic value in itself.’

‘I like this bunch,’ whispered the Princess, ‘they
totally
talk my language.’

‘So we only barter,’ continued Geraint the Great, ‘but no more goats. We want washing machines, food mixers, toasters and other consumer durables. That nice man in the half-track gave us his iPod.’

That explained how Curtis got past, at least. We told him we had none of these things, nor any reasonable chance of finding any at short notice.

‘Very well,’ replied Geraint, ‘you will return the way you came and we will take the novelty rubber Dragon in exchange for your lives.’

As he said it he pointed at Rubber Colin, who was still sitting, very much made of rubber, in the back of the jeep.

‘The … novelty rubber Dragon is not for trade,’ I said.

The chief rolled off his horse in a less-than-expert fashion and drew his sword.

‘Then you will die,’ said the warrior chief, ‘and painfully – except for Addie, who will do our washing and cleaning for the rest of her natural life.’

Addie drew out her dagger and glared at the warriors.

‘I will die protecting my friends.’

They were fine words and I knew she was good in a fight, but a dozen Mountain Silurians armed to the teeth against a twelve-year-old wasn’t a fight I’d be betting on any time soon.

‘Wait!’ said the Princess. ‘I can help you.’

‘You can iron?’ said the chief. ‘That would indeed be a game-changer.’

‘No,’ said the Princess. ‘I’ll help you change your financially crippling goat surplus into a valuable trading commodity.’

Geraint looked at the Princess and narrowed his eyes.

‘It’s an attractive idea,’ he said. ‘We have thousands of the blasted things. How?’

‘Well,’ said the Princess, taking a deep breath, ‘we would first form a Goat Trading Corporation and use this to bring together all the other goat-producing tribes in order to control the number of goats moving on to the market. Instead of buyers dictating goat prices based on free supply, the goat-producing tribes can limit production and peg their value to an agreed minimum goat price so that all producers get a fair deal. We can couple this with an advertising strategy to increase goat use awareness among the public, and even develop a breeding programme to generate expensive limited-edition goats for collectors. I think we can increase the value of goats tenfold in as little as six months, so long as all the other goat-producing tribes agree to join us.’

‘What’s she talking about?’ whispered Addie.

‘I have absolutely no idea,’ I whispered back.

Geraint the Great stared at the Princess for a long time, then replaced his sword in its scabbard.

‘It shall be so,’ he said. ‘You will consult with our accountant, Pugh the Numbers.’

One of the neater warriors climbed off his Buzonji as Geraint remounted his, and after Geraint had told us we were ‘the guests of the Siluri’, they were all gone, leaving the Princess to explain her complex marketing plans in detail to Pugh the Numbers.

It was almost an hour before we were back on the road again.

‘That’s kind of weird,’ said the Princess once we had driven a mile or two down the road in silence. We had dumped the trailer and freed the goats, so although still cramped in the jeep, we were at least a little faster.

‘What’s weird?’ I asked. ‘There’s a wide choice out here.’

‘The
quantity
of goats involved. Pugh the accountant said that Skybus Aeronautics gave them two thousand goats a month as payment for mining rights at Cadair Idris.’

‘What were they mining?’

The Princess shrugged.

‘He didn’t say. But because the contract was well drafted, they couldn’t convert the goats into something more usable. At least, not until now. I think the Goat Marketing Board will be a serious earner for the Mountain Silurians. It might even civilise them.’

‘You did say that peace would be brought about only through economic means,’ I observed.

‘I did, didn’t I?’

We reached the farthest extent of the wooded area a half-hour later, and Addie pulled into the shade of a large lime tree. We climbed out to consider our next move.

‘There’s at least a mile of open country to the base of the mountain,’ said Addie, peering at the landscape through binoculars, ‘and we must be cautious – a lot of people have vanished travelling this way.’

I looked up at the sheer grey mass of Cadair Idris, the top swathed in clouds, and saw, for the first time, that one side of the rocky pinnacle seemed to have the remnants of a stairway cut into the stone. The road upon which we were parked led to the mountain, then branched to where we could see that some buildings had been constructed beneath the almost vertical southern face. They seemed quite new, too. I nudged Perkins and pointed. He spelled himself a hand telescope again and stared for a moment at the distant buildings.

‘Several large buildings,’ he said, ‘and a barbed-wire perimeter with lots of people milling about. Looks like a manufacturing facility of some sort. The Skybus truck has just arrived and the gates are being opened to allow it to enter.’

‘Manufacturing?’ I said. ‘Out here?’

‘Looks like it. With a sizeable workforce, too, but they’re too far away to see details.’

‘Someone not subject to the hundred per cent fatality index, at any rate,’ I said.

‘Pugh the Numbers called them
Cavi homini,
’ said the Princess.

Addie laughed and I asked her what was so funny.

‘It’s like Cloud Leviathan graveyards and Sky Pirate Wolff and the Eye of Zoltar – myths. The
Cavi homini
are spooks, bogles, mysterious men without morals, or form. They take what they want, and nothing can kill them. It is said they are only empty walking clothes, with nothing inside. The translation from Latin is—’

‘Hollow Men,’ I said with a shiver.

‘Yes,’ said Addie with a frown. ‘You have these fairy stories in the Kingdom of Snodd as well?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘we’ve got them for real, as have you. We call them drones. They are used by …’

I stopped talking as several pieces of a large and very unseen jigsaw puzzle that was hovering above me locked into place. The Mighty Shandar used drones, owned a large share of Skybus Aeronautics, and here in the empty land near Cadair Idris, Hollow Men were manufacturing something for Skybus and then shipping it out in the trucks we had just seen.

‘Addie,’ I said, ‘just what did you see in the back of the Skybus truck?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, ‘it was completely empty.’

‘It couldn’t have been,’ I said. ‘They come in heavy and go out light – you said so yourself.’

‘I did say that, yes. The empty lorry I saw was one of the heavy ones being driven in.’

‘Then there’s
less than nothing
in the light ones going out?’

Addie shrugged.

‘I don’t get it,’ said the Princess.

‘Sometimes when magic and the Mighty Shandar are involved,’ I said, ‘it’s better not to know the truth.’

‘Jenny, I’ve found the half-track,’ said Perkins, who had focused his fingerscope on the side of the mountain where I had seen the stone steps.

‘And?’

‘The vehicle’s empty, but halfway to the top I can see a small figure – Curtis. I’d recognise that bandana anywhere. What do we do?’

‘Do what we planned and climb Cadair Idris,’ I said, ‘by way of the steps, preferably.’

‘And the Skybus facility and the Hollow Men?’ asked Addie.

I shrugged.

‘They’re what – two miles away? I say we worry about them if they start heading our way.’

So that’s what we decided to do. We got back in the jeep and headed off over the open land towards the mountain. I say ‘open land’ but that was true only in that there were no trees. The road rose and fell with the contours, and then tipped into a shallow ravine where the river crossed our path.

Addie slowed to a stop when we reached the river, and we looked around at the morbid sight that met our eyes. We didn’t speak for some moments.

‘Holy cow,’ said Perkins finally.

Addie switched off the engine and we climbed out. It was a medium-sized river, stony and fast moving and no more than a couple of feet deep. But it wasn’t the river that we had stopped to see, it was the
bones
. There were, quite literally, thousands of them. All human, and in places piled so thick that they had clogged the river and raised the water level. There were vehicles, too. Some overturned by winter floods, others corroded to nothing and a few that looked as though they had been there less than a year.

‘I’m thinking we’ve just discovered what happened to everyone who headed this way,’ said Addie, ‘ambushed and massacred.’

‘Do you think the Mountain Silurians aim to kill us anyway?’ asked Wilson. ‘That they aim to kill us anyway?’

‘After all my financial advice,’ said the Princess, ‘that would be a pretty dismal thing to do.’

Addie had approached the river and knelt down to inspect the bones.

‘It won’t be the Siluri,’ said Addie, ‘they’re honourable people, if a little violent and not very sophisticated.’

She held up a cleanly sliced ulna, then a lower jaw cleaved neatly sideways.

‘No, these are random wounds by a swiftly wielded long sword. These people were overcome not by skill, but by numbers.’

‘Drones,’ I said. ‘Hollow Men.’

We looked around nervously, but there was nothing – just the babbling of the brook, the gurgle of water through rocks.

‘Over here,’ said Wilson, who was standing next to a Land Rover half submerged in the river. The canvas top and seats had rotted, and the keys were still in the ignition. In the back were rain-stained sketchbooks full of illustrations of the Cloud Leviathan, and notebooks packed with notes, observations, discoveries.

‘A scientific expedition,’ said Wilson. ‘All that learning. For nothing.’

Addie drew her dagger and looked around. We were in a dip in the ground. It was a bad place to stop and a good place to attack, depending on your perspective.

‘These were all attacked
returning
,’ I said quietly. ‘Look at the direction in which the vehicles are pointing.’

Everyone looked. All the vehicles were headed towards the road we had just come in on. All these travellers had discovered secrets out here – Leviathans, Hollow Men, even something about Sky Pirate Wolff and possibly the Eye of Zoltar – but the secrets had stayed secrets; dead men and women tell no tales.

‘You were right, Addie,’ said Perkins, ‘there
is
a hidden menace waiting for us out here. But even Hollow Men have to come from somewhere – and the closest place is that facility. Even if they started to march right now, we’d still have half an hour or more to get away.’

‘I think not,’ said the Princess, who had moved away from the group and was staring at the ground near a small grassy hollow. ‘We’re surrounded.’

We joined her, and she pointed to four swords that were buried up to their hilts in the ground.

But it wasn’t the swords alone that worried us. Positioned around them were four neat stacks of clothes tied up with string. There were trousers, shirts, pairs of shoes, gloves and jackets, ties and hats. All identical, all carefully folded and waiting to be conjured into life to do their master’s bidding. Drones.

‘All these people were killed by a small drone army, eager and willing to do one thing and one thing only,’ I said. ‘To stop anyone returning from Cadair Idris.’

‘It would explain why Geraint the Great wanted my entire plan for the Goat Marketing Board up front,’ said the Princess. ‘He knew that people never return.’

‘But why?’ asked Perkins. ‘What’s the secret?’

‘I’m only guessing here,’ I said, ‘but perhaps the facility we saw is a manufacturing facility for hollow suits for the drones to wear. Perhaps the magic is in the weave.’

‘If that was so,’ said Addie, ‘the lorries would come out heavier than they go in, but they don’t, they’re
lighter
on the way out.’

‘And yet the lorry you saw coming in, the heavy one, was empty?’ said Perkins.

‘I know,’ said Addie, ‘it doesn’t make any sense.’

‘I’ve got a feeling it won’t just be about Cloud Leviathans and Sky Pirate Wolff,’ I said, ‘it will be about drones, the Mighty Shandar and Skybus Aeronautics.’

Perkins looked around at the scene of the massacre.

‘And I’ve a nasty feeling that our enlightenment may be short lived.’

‘You say the jolliest things,’ said Wilson, ‘but we’re not dead yet. Let’s get going.’

I instructed the others to pick up half a dozen discarded swords just in case and we climbed back aboard the jeep in a subdued mood. We drove up and out of the shallow ravine, then across the empty grassland. As we drove, the mountain seemed to loom over us even more oppressively. All we could see now was a thin trail of cloud blowing from the summit high above. Now alert to drone clothes-packs, we noted several more on the way, all identical – a package of clothes with shoes and hat, tied up with string with a sword close by.

We parked next to the empty half-track and I rummaged through our baggage. Mercifully for us, Curtis was as lazy as he was unpleasant, and aside from taking all the cash, everything else was left untouched. My Helping Hand
^™
was still there, as was the letter of credit with which to negotiate for Boo’s release. More importantly, there was also my last homing snail and the conch. I tried to raise Tiger straight away, but there was nothing but static and sounds of the sea from the conch. I’d not heard from them for over twenty-four hours – not even a homing snail – and I was beginning to get nervous.

‘What are you doing?’ I called to Perkins, who was twenty yards away, treading stealthily in the direction from which we had just come.