Pure Dead Brilliant Part 5

"Thump-heaaave-thud-heaaave-thump-heaaave-you guys have no sense of rhythm whatsoever." The slave-master strode up to the drummer and tapped him on the shoulder. "I said," he yelled above the din, "where's your sense of rhythm? Can't you do a bossa nova? A tango, then, how about a tango?" Seeing the look of sullen incomprehension on the drummer's face, the slave-master sighed. "Oh, all right. A das.h.i.+ng white sergeant? Strip the willow? Oh, give me strength-come on, guys, lighten up a bit. . . ."

Thump-heave-thud-heave-thump-heave.

With an exasperated tssssst, Astoroth turned his back on the slaves and their drummer and climbed up through a hatch onto the deck. Squinting in the daylight, he drew in a deep breath of fresh air. Not much longer now, he reminded himself. Find out where Nostrilamus hid the Chronostone, collect same, dispatch him, harvest his soul-and head back to the Hadean Executive with the joyful tidings that the plan was now in place and he was long overdue a promotion from the dreary task of being Second Minister with a special responsibility for pacts and soul harvests. He was heartily sick of shunting back and forth through time, enduring the ma.s.sive discomforts and perils of centuries without flush toilets and antibiotics. . . . When I'm promoted, he decided, strolling past the galley where the unappetizing smell of the lunchtime broiled dormice wafted through an open hatch, I want to be forever in the twenty-first century, with endless access to wealth, magnetic good looks, and nonstop room service. . . . His thoughts were interrupted when the rank meatiness of the odor of lunch was suddenly overlaid by something infinitely more unpleasant-a foul miasma of decay that intensified with each step that Astoroth took toward the stateroom, where Nostrilamus, the once powerful Malefica of Caledon, was fighting his last battle with the foe none could vanquish.

Astoroth paused, taking a small square of muslin from his pocket and sprinkling it with oil of vetiver from a tiny flask kept on a chain round his neck. Crumpling the scented muslin in his hands, Astoroth sniffed it and then folded the cloth into a triangle and fas.h.i.+oned himself a rudimentary face mask. Thus attired, he moved forward through the press of legionaries grouped outside the stateroom. As the door was opened for him by a gagging slave, those on deck were engulfed in an odor so vile that all save Astoroth were driven to retch and rush for the s.h.i.+p's rails. Propped up on pillows, Nostrilamus appeared to be mercifully unaffected by his own effluvia. The dying man was utterly engrossed in writing a will, absentmindedly batting blowflies away from his face and apparently unperturbed by the ma.s.s of maggots that squirmed in the cyanotic flesh of what had once been his legs. Livid lines of red ran upward from the wounds, arrowing toward his heart-harbingers of his approaching death from blood poisoning. Nostrilamus's breath came in ragged gasps, each inhalation an effort of will, each rattling exhalation ticking off the moments till his heart stilled. Without raising his eyes to the intruder, Nostrilamus spoke, his voice contemptuous, a far cry from his ambitious younger self, a wiser man now than he'd been all those years ago in a tavern in Caledonia.

"You again," he whispered, laying down his stylus and pa.s.sing the engraved wax tablet to the slave by his bedside.

"Payback time." Astoroth crossed the room to stand over Nostrilamus, the Malefica of Caledon, ignoring the dying man's slave, who bore the waxen will and testament outside, closing the door quietly. "One thing, Caledon," the demon murmured. "There seems to have been a mistake-the h.o.a.rd of treasure in the forest contained something that was never meant for human possession." He bent over his victim and tried hard not to breathe too deeply. "I want it back," he said, in a voice intended to sound utterly menacing, but which emerged as faintly desperate.

With the hypersensitivity of one standing on the edge of the abyss, Nostrilamus realized that his tormentor was not in control of the situation. Moreover, he clearly recalled the day he had uncovered the treasure. In that strange metal trunk there had been wealth beyond his wildest dreams, but the thing he remembered above all was the gemstone, as big as a plover's egg, that sent light spinning upward from where it lay buried at the bottom of the h.o.a.rd. The last time Nostrilamus had seen it, before fleeing for his life, the precious stone had been dangling from the ear of the dragon that had devoured all his legionaries. He felt his heart miss a beat and the chill creep up from his ruined legs. The room seemed to dim slightly and he knew that the end was almost upon him.

"Come on, you moron," Astoroth muttered. "Where did you hide it? Tell me where it is." With a deplorable lack of bedside manners he grabbed the dying man and shook him. "Tell me now or I'll-"

Nostrilamus laughed in his face, his last puffs of breath causing the demon to recoil in disgust. "Or what?" he gasped, the rattle in his chest more apparent. "What're you going to do to me that hasn't been done already? Kill me?" A hideous clotted bubbling came from him as he choked out his valediction. "Do your worst, Minister. You can't always get what you waaaaa-"

In his fury at being outwitted by a mere human, Astoroth nearly forgot to harvest the departing soul. Halfway to the door he remembered and spun on his heel just in time to see a small soot-black thing flutter out from the dead man's mouth. In truth, Nostrilamus's soul looked more like an animated prune than the luminous anima of popular mythology, but for all that it was still a soul. With one strike, the demon plucked it from the air, and, pausing briefly to savor the moment, swallowed it whole.

"Right," he growled, flinging open the stateroom door and pus.h.i.+ng past the waiting legionaries. "I'm out of here."

"Master?" said a centurion. "What news of Caledon?"

Astoroth had gained the side of the s.h.i.+p and was scrambling onto the handrail, hampered only slightly by his cloak. Far below, the oily water rolled and heaved, the surface broken here and there by drowned ribbons of bladder wrack. Balancing carefully on the rail, Astoroth rose to his feet, his arms outstretched against the sky, cloak billowing dramatically behind him, as he considered how best to break the news to the crew.

"Vale, CALEDON!" he roared. "I regret to inform you that your leader has popped his clogs!" Silence greeted this announcement. The legionaries frowned at him in some confusion. With a sigh, Astoroth rephrased his announcement. "The management is sorry to inform you that your boss has bought the farm . . . turned up his toes . . . shuffled off this mortal coil-" Frowns deepened, and a mutinous grumbling rose from the rear of the crew. Sensing that all was not going smoothly, Astoroth changed tack abruptly. "For what it's worth, guys, my advice is to forget trying to take over the world by battering the Caledonians into submission. Trust me, there's an easier way to achieve world domination. Just go home now, bury your dead, invent pizza, and learn how to play football. . . ." Laughing insanely, the demon overbalanced, and, with hardly a splash to mark his pa.s.sing, was swallowed by the sea.

The Ablutions of Astoroth Clasping a black leather toiletry kit, Fiamma d'Infer was first up to use the guest bathroom. At this early hour the corridors and pa.s.sageways of StregaSchloss were deserted, and outside the world was silent. From the nursery the witch could hear the sleepy burblings that heralded Damp's awakening. Hobbling slightly, Fiamma slipped into the bathroom, closed the door behind her, and turned the key in the lock. She dumped her kit on the marble-topped washstand, checked the bath for spiders, and extravagantly turned both bath taps on full. Taking a small flask and cotton b.a.l.l.s from her kit, Fiamma began to remove her makeup, which was somewhat the worse for wear after a night's sleep. What she uncovered with each application of cotton ball was a far older face than the one currently on display to her colleagues from the Inst.i.tute for Advanced Witchcraft. As each layer of paint came off, a network of lines and connected liver spots was revealed, until at last she gazed on her naked face in the mirror.

"Eughhh," she remarked pleasantly, reaching up to unpin her long red hair and hurl it across the room. Wigless, makeup-less, she resembled an ancient tortoise. Adding to this impression, she reached inside her mouth, groped around, and removed a set of teeth, which she placed carefully in the sink. Lacking the support of her teeth, Fiamma's lips collapsed inward and her face began to lose definition. Worse was to come: bending down, she seized her left foot and twisted it sideways with enough force to break her ankle. The foot unscrewed with the grim sound of bone grating on bone, and revealed itself to be a prosthetic device designed to conceal the fact that Fiamma's leg ended in a cloven hoof. She attacked her other foot with similar results, then placed both false feet in the sink alongside her teeth. Disrobing entirely, she squatted on the edge of the bath and proceeded to extrude a grotesque forked tail from some internal cache located deep within her stomach.

"What an effort," she complained, turning off the taps and flopping into the water. She had no sooner settled comfortably in the bath than a muted ringing came from the direction of her toiletry kit. "Give me a break," she muttered, as she climbed out of the bath and leapt across the floorboards to retrieve her cell phone from its hiding place.

"What?" she whispered. "It's not a good time right now." Aware that even in summer one cannot stand around in Argyll in a state of naked wetness without courting frostbite, she climbed back into the bath and continued, "No . . . No, I haven't found it yet, but I know it's here somewhere. Yes, the clocks are all out of kilter. . . . Yes, I know, the signs all point to it being close at hand, but it's just not that easy to find a stone the size of an egg in the middle of an estate in Argyll. Have you any idea just how big this house is? Or indeed how much stuff these guys have been h.o.a.rding over the centuries? Do the words 'needle' and 'haystack' sound familiar?"

Fiamma leant back and listened as the voice on the other end droned on. Idly, she gazed up at the ceiling, noting the parlous state of the cornices and the sloppy housekeeping that allowed ropes of cobweb to crisscross the plasterwork.

"I am aware that I'll be reincarnated as a head louse if I mess this one up," Fiamma murmured. "All too aware. However, that simply isn't going to happen. I can guarantee that there's as much chance of that as h.e.l.l freezing over. You see, I've stumbled on something while I was digging around here. Mhmmm, it's a real treasure. An infant magus. Mmmm-hmmm, lucky old me. Very small, somewhat undeveloped, unaware of its latent powers . . . Yes, I know it's appallingly hazardous to attempt to harvest the soul of one such, but if I can somehow win its confidence-" To mask the sound of her voice, Fiamma reached forward and turned on the hot tap, which, being connected to the dodgy StregaSchloss plumbing, obliged with a cacophony of splutters and clanks before it disgorged a gout of peat-stained water.

"No, no, I'm not breaking up, it's just my mud bath," she continued. "Listen, you have to trust my judgment here. I'll get the Boss's precious Chronostone back, harvest the last male soul as per the agreement, and-as a bonus-I might be able to up the ante by harvesting a baby magus. Now, tell me that isn't going to make those red eyes glint? Put a point in your tail? Not to mention put me in line for a major promotion coupled with a meteoric pay raise . . ."

Crouched in a corner of the ceiling cornice, Tarantella was absentmindedly grooming her abdomen while eavesdropping on this one-sided conversation. Clouds of steam billowed up from the bath, causing the tarantula to glare down at the bath's occupant.

"Hey, you down there. Yes, you. Do you have to use quite so much water?" She dropped vertiginously floorward on a skein of silk and bounced to a halt a scant hand's-breadth away from Fiamma's nose. "I mean, look at me," Tarantella continued, giving a vigorous shudder to dislodge droplets of water vapor beading her furry abdomen. "Anyone with half a brain would know that spiders hate water, and here I am covered in it, thanks to yauuuuk-" A miniature tidal wave knocked Tarantella out of the air and swept her in a bedraggled tangle into a corner of the bathroom. Half-drowned, unable to pry apart her waterlogged legs and escape, the tarantula could only watch helplessly as the witch climbed out of the bathtub and bore down on her, still muttering into her cell phone. Frantically, Tarantella struggled against the film of water coating her limbs, aware that for once she would have been far wiser had she kept quiet. A foot shot out, its h.o.r.n.y yellow hoof missing Tarantella's body by a fraction, but brutally amputating one of her legs in an attempt to consign her to oblivion. Tarantella's eyes widened in pain and terror, but she made a supreme effort to survive by dragging her body behind the waste pipe of the toilet. There, drifting in and out of consciousness, she inspected the damage. Extruding a lumpy length of spider silk, she gathered this into a sticky bundle and used it to plug the gaping wound where her leg had been.

Overhead, a loud crash followed by a shriek signaled that Fiamma's hoof had made contact with the unforgiving porcelain of the toilet.

By now, Tarantella was in too much pain to care. The spider- silk dressing was soaked with blood, and she hadn't the strength to replace it.

"Eughhh," moaned Fiamma from somewhere above. "My poor hoof . . . No, not you, you idiot. Look, I'll phone you back. I've got to take care of something at this end. . . . Yes. Catch you later." There was a beep as she switched off the phone. Then her voice dropped in pitch to a growl, causing Tarantella to cast around for a refuge-only to face the chilling realization that there was nowhere to hide.

"Right, spider. Eavesdropping on Executive business is a crime punishable by death. Lipping off to a Minister, ditto. Ignorance is no excuse. In short, you're legless, clueless, and about to be lifeless-"

"And you're hairless, toothless, and, it has to be said, charmless," observed a voice, close to where Tarantella lay.

"Yeah," agreed another voice. "Bog off, baldy. Pick on something your own size."

Just before a pink mist settled over Tarantella's vision and bore her off to oblivion, she recognized the voices of StregaSchloss's free-range rodents, the Illiterat Mult.i.tudina and her educated daughter, Terminus. Before Fiamma could make good her threat to kill Tarantella, the rats hoisted the unconscious tarantula onto a stretcher improvised from a sheet of toilet paper and carried her away out of danger through a gap in the baseboard.

Thwarted, Fiamma's face contorted into something resembling a malignant walnut. Behind her, the bathroom mirror cracked from side to side, sending a lethal shower of gla.s.s cascading onto the floor. In the bath, water bubbled and hissed, turning a bilious yellow and emitting a feral stench. Underfoot, the floorboards rippled and bowed as if the wood had turned into a liquid that allowed a glimpse of something swimming below its surface. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, Fiamma's rage vanished. The floor stilled its tidal motion, the bathwater returned to post-ablution grunginess, the mirror shards re-formed into an unbroken looking gla.s.s, and Fiamma looked within and found her reflection pleasing. Reabsorbing her tail, and replacing her makeup, hair, teeth, and feet, she strained to hear the sound that had caused her flash of temper to evaporate. The sound came again and she smiled. There it was: Damp in the distant nursery, her infant voice raised in song, greeting the day, with each note ringing pure and true.

"Such untapped potential," Fiamma confided to her reflection. "Such latent power." The demon licked its lips and gazed into the mirror, its foul mind looking out at the world through eyes that had changed shape and color countless times as Astoroth reincarnated himself for the express purpose of harvesting souls down through the centuries. The Borgia Inheritance was, thankfully, his final task as Second Minister for the Hadean Executive. Second Minister? The demon spat on the floor. Frankly, the Boss's dominion over Hades was way past its sell-by date. With the Chronostone plus the power of the baby magus's soul, well . . .

"Just watchhh me now," Fiamma hissed, s.n.a.t.c.hing up her toiletry kit and striding out of the bathroom, leaving the faintest whiff of sulfur in her wake.

The Illegitimate Dragon It had long been Damp's habit to greet each new day with a song to her pajamas. The infant had only recently discovered that she could undo the snaps on her nightwear with one sharp tug, and since then it had been her pleasure to strip herself of both pj's and diaper and hurl these over the bars of her crib. This was invariably accompanied by an enthusiastic rendition of "There Was a Princess Long Ago," punctuated by gales of infant mirth as each layer of clothing sailed out of Damp's crib and onto the nursery floor.

Damp had just reached the verse where she was describing the princess's accommodation: and she lived in a big high towel,

big high towel,

big high-

THUD . . . and Mrs. McLachlan woke to the sound of Damp's diaper landing wetly on the floor. This morning there was also a heavy slapping from the other side of the nursery door, accompanied by a determined scratching, as if something were attempting to claw its way in.

"NESTOR!" roared the nanny. "Stop that at once. You know you're not allowed up here. . . ."

Silence from behind the nursery door. Mrs. McLachlan groaned as she hoisted herself out of bed. This was becoming all too wearisome, she decided, padding across the floorboards to open the door and ascertain whether the baby dragon had obeyed her dictates. He hadn't, but pity moved Mrs. McLachlan to step aside and allow the little beast access to the warmth of the nursery. Nestor crept across the floor and curled up in a woebegone ball at the foot of Damp's crib, with his head pillowed on her discarded pajamas.

"This is ridiculous," muttered the nanny, pulling a purple woollen dressing gown around herself and carrying Damp off to the bathroom. Moments later, with Damp washed and dressed, Mrs. McLachlan shepherded both infants downstairs for breakfast.

The kitchen table bore witness to the hasty satisfaction of several appet.i.tes: cereal bowls lay abandoned, an almost empty milk bottle sat unhygienically on the warming plate of the range, an empty gla.s.s coffeepot floated in the sc.u.m of last night's dirty dishwater, and the b.u.t.ter was pockmarked with specks of charred toast. The door to the kitchen garden was ajar, and from outside Mrs. McLachlan could hear the distant groans and shrieks that indicated the morning yoga cla.s.s was in session. As she washed cereal bowls, the nanny noted with disgust that Ffup was outside, practicing yoga with no thought for her infant's welfare.

"Selfish beast," she muttered, cras.h.i.+ng crockery onto the draining board with uncharacteristic force. Ever since Nestor had hatched at StregaSchloss last Hogmanay, Mrs. McLachlan had hoped that Ffup would knuckle down to the responsibilities of single parenthood and attempt to raise her baby son in a manner befitting a dragon. Regrettably, this had not been the case. . . . While there was no doubt that Ffup adored her child, it was also true that she wors.h.i.+ped herself in equal measure; the teenage dragon spent many more hours preening her wings, painting her talons, improving her waistline, and gazing in the mirror than she spent nurturing Nestor. Moreover, Mrs. McLachlan thought, as she stirred a pot of porridge at the range, it was perfectly obvious that Nestor was never going to grow up to be a pedigree dragon. The Strega-Borgias appeared to be united in a conspiracy of silence on the subject of who, exactly, Nestor's absent father might have been, but one look at the baby-with his redundant wings (too small), deep blue scales (should really have been muddy green), occasional lack of fire-breathing ability (even as an infant, he should have been lighting candles with one hiccup), and-most significantly of all-his vast, overgrown tail that the family all affected to ignore . . . well, really! Mrs. McLachlan dropped a large pinch of salt in the porridge pot and snorted loudly.

As she decanted the steaming oats into three bowls and sat down to have breakfast with Damp and Nestor, she was suddenly struck by a distant memory from countless decades ago, long before she became nanny to the Strega-Borgias. . . .

. . . a vast, frozen loch, across which she fled with a group of women, all escaping some nameless horror. The turning year brought the coldest winter in living memory. The ice that formed a skin over every loch in Scotland had been measured in finger-widths at Hallows Eve-hand-spans by midwinter-and by Candlemas, no spade or pick could penetrate the iron-hard cover on every body of water from Roxburgh to Sutherland. Without fish to supplement their meager winter diet, whole communities of loch-dwellers found themselves facing starvation. Far from celebrating Candlemas, the hitherto G.o.d-fearing congregations plundered their churches and ate the candles. Rumors abounded of desecrated graves, gutted crypts, and other horrors too hideous to mention. In the perceived absence of divine mercy, the lochside people turned to old religions and darker practices.

The fugitive women had sought shelter in a tiny hamlet on the sh.o.r.es of a frozen loch. Huts and houses huddled next to a sheet of ice beneath which, it was rumored, swam enough fish to feed the entire population of Scotland for centuries to come. In grat.i.tude for the hospitality shown to her by the people of the hamlet, Flora McLachlan had resolved to rescue them from starvation. At first light she had slipped away from the press of sleeping bodies huddled round the ashy fire and walked out onto the ice. . . .

Near the sh.o.r.e the wind had scoured rutted circles in the ice, but farther out all was still, save her breath rising in misty clouds above her head. Faced with the impossibility of breaking the ice herself, she resolved to awaken the Sleeper, even though she would, in all probability, perish in the attempt. But how to make the creature rise from a sleep of several centuries past? Should she weave a spell of warmer waters, fish-full salty southern seas, to melt the frozen skies of the Sleeper's underwater world? Murmur a lullaby of rocking rivers to bear the lonely beast in its tidal ebb and flow? Tempt him awake with tales of the mackerel mountain and the herring hill that rims the salmon stream? Cruel to wake this creature, who slept to heal a broken heart, who created the loch from tears, and who closed his eyes believing that this world held no love for him-the Sleeper, whose kin had long crumbled to dust. Flora knew, even as she whispered the words that would awaken him, that with his dawning consciousness would come the knowledge of all that he had lost and all the loneliness to come. . . . She almost faltered in her resolve, but beneath her feet, from fathoms below, came a faint cry like a rabbit in a snare. Slipping on the ice, Flora began to run, her frozen feet betraying her as she skidded and stumbled toward the far-off sh.o.r.e. Behind her, the cry rose to a desolate keening that hurt the ears of all who heard. The sound rose in pitch as, with a deafening crack, dark lines zigzagged across the ice. Still the sound of some creature in mortal agony grew and swelled to fill the air. The ice suddenly fractured along the cracks and Flora leapt from floe to floe, trying to find her way back to solid ground.

Only once did she turn back to look, to catch a glimpse of that lonely, awful shape-mouth agape, as it howled its outrage at a world that had broken its centuries of mindless, forgetful slumber for no better reason than the survival of a handful of loch-dwellers with a desperate need for fish.

A handful of loch-dwellers, thought Mrs. McLachlan as she raised a spoonful of porridge to her mouth, whose idea of grateful thanks to their savior was to attempt to burn her at the stake for witchcraft. . . .

"HOT, HOT BURRRRNY!" wailed Damp, hurling her porridge spoon across the breakfast table. Beside her, Nestor's mouth dropped open in a howl of outrage at the singular lack of hot, hot burrrny in his bowl. Abruptly hauled back to the present, Mrs. McLachlan found herself giving silent thanks for the good fortune that had brought her here to StregaSchloss, where being accused of practicing witchcraft was a sincere compliment. . . .

Time Out On her way downstairs for breakfast, Pandora paused outside her parents' bedroom, crossing her fingers in the hope that they had settled their differences over the vexed question of the houseguests, and were even now sitting up in bed, planning the day ahead and admiring the view through their bedroom window over coffee and croissants. A wail and a crash from behind their door told a different story. Signor Strega-Borgia, unpredictable of temperament and with a fondness for yelling matched only by a habit of hurling china around to underline his point, was in full operatic flow. Approaching footsteps and an increase in volume signaled to Pandora that he was about to storm through the door in front of her, and if she didn't want to be accused of eavesdropping, she'd better make herself scarce.

She fled down the corridor, leaping over several pairs of pointy lace-up boots that had been placed outside bedroom doors by a few of the more demanding houseguests on the mistaken a.s.sumption that Latch would attend to their polis.h.i.+ng. Reaching the nursery, Pandora slipped behind its open door and hid, chewing her fingernails as she heard her father stamp past, muttering to himself in unintelligible Italian. Pandora slumped on the floor beside Mrs. McLachlan's bed and laid her head wearily on the quilt. Downstairs the front door slammed shut and footsteps crunched across the rose-quartz drive. Minutes later, Pandora heard the car starting up and correctly deduced that Signor Strega-Borgia was off to inflict his bad mood on the nearby village of Auchenlochtermuchty. The sound of running water and clanking plumbing meant that Signora Strega-Borgia had taken refuge in the shower. Not for the first time, Pandora wished her parents would get a grip on themselves and stop fighting. Their battles were always about such stupid things, and this latest skirmish over the appearance of rodent droppings in the coffee was just so childish and immature that Pandora would have felt embarra.s.sed for them had it not been for her own current war with her sibling. . . . She debated whether to go and wake t.i.tus and put Tarantella's plan into action by bringing him breakfast in bed. Brilliant plan, Pan, she congratulated herself, checking the bedside clock to make sure that it wasn't too early to rouse the slug-a-bed. The digital display read 20:02, which by Pandora's calculations was about twelve hours fast, since she had a rough idea of the time from the light filtering in from outside, the amount of birdsong audible from the garden, and the sound of activity coming from downst- The alarm clock vanished. Pandora blinked, and there it was, back again, still reading 20:02. She hardly had time to draw a breath before it vanished again.

"What?" she gasped as it reappeared, its palindromic numerals still visible on its face. Pandora sat up and reached out to touch it as it disappeared once more, reappearing one heartbeat later, rea.s.suringly solid under her fingertips. However, the time remained unchanged and Pandora watched and waited to see what would happen when the numerals advanced to 20:03. The clock blinked in and out of existence for several minutes, but according to its own mysterious internal reckoning, time stood still.

Wondering if it was broken, Pandora picked it up and turned it over in her hands. For such a small artifact it was ridiculously heavy, and being made of metal, it felt cool to the touch. On the rear of the clock were two small k.n.o.bs: one was pretty obviously the ON/OFF switch. But the function of the other k.n.o.b was less clear, since the only clues to what it did were two opposing arrows and letters embossed into the metal thus: P <> F.

Wondering what language was being used, Pandora a.s.sumed that this must be the k.n.o.b to turn in order to reset the display on the clock face. At first the k.n.o.b resisted any attempt to turn it, until Pandora pulled it toward her, whereupon with a small click it rotated easily under her fingers as the display ran backward. Reaching 08:02, Pandora clicked the k.n.o.b back into place and immediately wished she hadn't bothered.

The floor underneath her vanished and the walls of StregaSchloss fell away. Still reflexively clutching the clock, Pandora found herself spinning sickeningly in midair. No sooner had she registered this fact than she crash-landed on something hard and extremely unfriendly to human flesh.

"AOWWWW!" she wailed, trying to work out which bit of her hurt most. Attempting not to move too much, she looked around and found that she was inside what appeared to be a gigantic pit made from twigs and branches. Overhead she could see daylight through a filigree of leaves, but all around and underneath her were mud, dirt, and woven twigs. It was not unlike being at the bottom of a vast hedge. Pandora stood up carefully, tucked the clock in the back pocket of her jeans, and looked around properly. The floor at her feet was littered with bones-and when she caught sight of the hedge-pit's one inhabitant, an egg the size of a rugby ball, she realized that not only was she in all probability unwelcome, but she was also trespa.s.sing.

It's a nest, she thought, gazing in horror at the egg, and whatever laid that isn't going to be too thrilled to find me here when it gets home. The nest was far too well constructed to allow her to force an escape through its walls or floor, so Pandora began to climb up and out, hanging on to the twigs and branches and wedging her feet into the mud and dirt that had been used as a primitive form of insulation. Bark and dirt rained down on her head as she scrabbled for handholds, and jamming her feet into the walls caused a continual fall of debris to patter down onto the floor of the nest and its sole occupant. After what felt like a lifetime, Pandora pulled herself over the rim of the nest and, dreading what she was about to see, peered over the edge.

"Whaaaat?" she groaned, stunned by the bizarre familiarity of the view below her. There was Lochnagargoyle up ahead, and there behind her were the peaks of Bengormless. "But . . . but-" squeaked Pandora, clinging to the dusty rim of the nest-but what on earth was she doing six hundred feet above ground, perched in what appeared to be an ancient Scots pine-and where had StregaSchloss gone?

Steeling herself to look down, she saw a thin spiral of smoke coiling up from the floor of what appeared to be virgin forest. Gone too were the gardens, the meadow, the icehouse, and the road to Auchenlochtermuchty. Below lay an almost unbroken canopy of leafy green, dotted here and there with little patches of dun-colored earth. It was as if StregaSchloss had never existed. Pandora trembled as she clung to the nest, her thoughts in disarray, but with a vague fear beginning to take shape in a corner of her mind. This isn't exactly a nest, she thought, watching the smoke drift up from below; the correct name for what I'm currently gate-cras.h.i.+ng is a "roost." A dragon's roost, she reminded herself, trying not to scream. She peered again at the source of the smoke, leaning out over the edge in order to obtain a better view down through the treetops. On the forest floor were two figures; the smaller of the two rea.s.suringly human, the other, with its telltale wings and spiny tail, unmistakably a dragon. Despite the Strega-Borgias' long and happy a.s.sociation with dragon-kind, the presence of gnawed bones on the floor of the roost tended to indicate that this particular dragon might not regard eating humans as a breach of etiquette.

This is ridiculous, Pandora thought. It's just not possible to be in the nursery one moment and in the blink of an eye to find myself . . . She closed her eyes and opened them again. Wide. Blinked twice and then, reaching carefully behind her, pulled Mrs. McLachlan's alarm clock out of her back pocket. There it is, she told herself, and . . . there it isn't. The time was still 08:02, but in one of those flashes of understanding when whole new synaptic pathways open up and one's brain undergoes a crash and rapid reboot, Pandora understood. It's not two minutes past eight, you numpty, she thought, it's eight hundred and two, as in the year, not the time, and to get back home, all you have to do is reset the numbers. . . . A shadow fell over her and, looking up, Pandora realized that time was about to run out. She pulled out the k.n.o.b on the back of the clock and began frantically turning it clockwise. A blast of hot air singed her eyelashes as she looked up into the eyes of the builder of the roost and, in all probability, the mother of the egg.

"NOT ANOTHER YIN!" it roared, affording Pandora a memorable view of rows of lethal yellow teeth, behind which waved a set of fireproof tonsils. "Youse wee pests must've been breeding like bunnies," it observed, adding, "I thought I'd got rid of youse dwarves years ago." The dragon shut its mouth with a clash and glared down at Pandora, its ma.s.sive wings slowly folding behind its back with a leathery creak. Hissing clouds of steam came from its nostrils as it reached up with one taloned leg to claw at something behind its head-the vast diamond stud in its ear catching the sun and sending a cascade of reflections dancing around the roost.

"Must be time for a snack," it remarked, patting its distended belly. "Me, I like mah toast well done, can't abide it raw," and reaching out to grab Pandora, it demonstrated the ease with which it intended to grill her.

Without a moment's hesitation, Pandora hammered the k.n.o.b home. In a blaze of fire she spun through the air until, with a jarring crash, she landed on cold, unforgiving stone. Opening her eyes, the first thing she saw was the alarm clock, which read 16:50. . . . Groaning, she stood up and realized where she was. This is StregaSchloss, she thought. This is my home hundreds of years before I was born. For some unaccountable reason this realization made her feel achingly lonely. I miss my family, she thought, stifling a moan-and trying not to make a sound in case something worse than dragons awaited her. It's like they're dead, she thought, or like I am. Officially, I don't exist. Awash with self-pity, she gazed around. It was indeed StregaSchloss, but a very different StregaSchloss to the one so familiar to her that she could have sleepwalked round it. The first thing she noticed was the lack of light. The reason for this soon became apparent: the windows had shrunk down to narrow little slits glazed with panes of gla.s.s of such bottle-bottom thickness as to allow little light to pa.s.s through. In the fireplace a half-charred tree trunk had replaced the more familiar oil-filled radiator that routinely warmed the nursery, and on the floor in front of the fireplace an all-too-real bearskin had been subst.i.tuted for the rag rug that two generations of Strega-Borgias had admired while having their diapers changed.

The walls were unpainted rough-hewn stone, and the door to the corridor was a substantial chunk of iron-studded raw timber, still oozing sap. The sound of loud voices and heavy footsteps came from nearby, causing Pandora to cast around for somewhere to hide. Unhelpfully, the room was almost empty, save for a large table upon which sat a globe-remarkable only for its wildly inaccurate depiction of all major landma.s.ses-several rolls of paper tied with ribbon and sealed with wax, and a small metal box.

The door rattled as someone on the other side thrust a key into the lock. s.n.a.t.c.hing up the alarm clock, Pandora positioned herself behind the door and, squinting in the gloom, began to reset the time. The door swung open and the voices were now distinct. Three men, Pandora guessed, praying that they wouldn't shut the door and discover her cowering behind it, armed with nothing more than a clock. To her relief, she might as well have been invisible for all the attention they paid her. The focus of their intentions was the metal box on the table.

"The key, Malvolio," one of the men said, obscuring Pandora's view of the table.

"I have it here," said another voice, presumably Malvolio's. "Do you take me for a simpleton?"

"Use it then, the barbarians are upon us," said a third voice, gruff and urgent in its delivery. There came a pause, and Pandora bent her head to peer at the numerals on the clock, looking up as the first man spoke, his voice filled with wonder.

"It is as foretold in the prophecy . . . the Pericola d'Illum-inem . . ." His voice trailed off, replaced by Malvolio's, who murmured, "Some call it the Dragon's Bane, others from across the water tell it as Man's Desire-"

"Yes, yes, a thousand pretty names," interrupted the gruff voice, obviously unimpressed by his companions' knowledge. "How came you by this-this jewel, Malvolio?"

"My grandmother traded it with the dragon-kind."

Sneaking a glimpse from behind the door, Pandora saw the three men silhouetted round a source of light far stronger than the feeble rays that shone through the window. She noted irreverently that the men, dressed for battle, were thus wearing enough metal to qualify them for inclusion in a dragon's larder under "canned goods."

"Traded it?" laughed the gruff voice, scorn dripping from every syllable. "Pray tell, what could that toothless hag possibly possess to trade for such a treasure?"

"In truth, certainly not her woman's charms," muttered the other man, spitting on the floor by way of emphasis.

"My grandmother," said Malvolio, with commendable self-restraint, "is a sorceress, and as such has the healing powers. The dragon-guardian of the-the jewel, as you call it, had a baby to fend for, a mate too stricken with melancholy to be able to feed his roost, and, most importantly, a broken wing."

"Hence the trade?" said the gruff voice.

"Indeed. My grandmother healed the dragon's wing with her sorcery, and in return was given the treasure. Which, in her wisdom, she has pa.s.sed on to me for safekeeping during this troublesome time. . . ."

Pandora was riveted by this exchange. Malvolio di S'Enchantedino Borgia was one of her earliest ancestors, and the sorceress he referred to could only have been Strega-Nonna-future denizen of the large freezer chest at StregaSchloss, in which she would lie, cryogenically frozen, awaiting advances in medical science. . . .

There came a repeated booming crash from outside, a noise that resounded through the stone walls and caused the three men to clutch their swords in alarm.

"The siege is over! Our defenses are breached!" yelled the gruff voice. "We must flee for our lives!"

"Hold fast," Malvolio commanded. "We dare not risk being found in possession of the stone-"

"But, but-if it were to fall into the wrong hands . . ."

"Perish the thought. We must leave it hidden within these walls and pray that we are spared and might one day return to retrieve it."

"But where, Malvolio? Where can you hope to hide a gem more radiant than the sun itself?"

"In the company of others such as itself," Malvolio stated obliquely. "In the chandelier above the great hall-come, follow me now." He spun round to face the door, his face turning ashen as he saw Pandora gazing at him in wide-eyed horror.

"By all that is holy!" shrieked Malvolio, crossing himself rapidly. "Begone, shade!"

Pandora didn't hesitate. Bringing her thumb down hard on the k.n.o.b, she vanished.

A Death in the Family The faraway c.h.i.n.k of rattling china and the growing suspicion that he was not alone roused t.i.tus from the worst night's sleep he'd ever endured. Tossed from one nightmare to another, he had spent the hours before dawn clutching his pillow, wide-awake and determined to remain so, lest the dreams return to fill his sleep with their hideous blend of visceral horror and homely domestic detail. Moreover, he was denied the mindless comfort of computer games, ever since his laptop had formed a dark alliance with something so vile that just to think about it brought t.i.tus out in a cold sweat. As the sun had begun its slow ascent over Lochnagargoyle, he had fallen into a deep and mercifully dreamless sleep that now, as he unglued his face from the pillow, made him too slow-witted and thickheaded to appreciate the generosity of the gift Pandora was offering him. He struggled to a sitting position, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and yawned widely.

"'Morning, t.i.tus." Pandora placed a laden breakfast tray on top of a pile of computer manuals on the bedside table and crossed to the window to fling open the curtains.

"Urrrrrgh. It's too bright," t.i.tus moaned, feeling his pupils contract painfully. Pandora ignored this, returning to the bedside to pour a cup of tea and pa.s.s it to her brother. "I've made you twelve slices of toast, there's a pile of scrambled eggs in that dish, along with eight slices of dry-cured bacon, two roasted tomatoes, four hot croissants, two of Mrs. McLachlan's raspberry m.u.f.fins, warmed, and some freshly squeezed orange jui-"

"Whoaaa," t.i.tus interrupted. "What's going on? Why are you doing this? You never bring me breakfast in bed. Yesterday you treated me like I was something you'd stepped in and now-" He waved his hand over the banquet steaming seductively by his bed.

"Eat up, t.i.tus, before it gets cold," Pandora replied mildly.

"Have you poisoned it? That's why you're so keen, huh? You're hoping to stand there, cackling over my twitching body, and then rush off to inform my lawyers that due to my unforeseen demise, you're next in line to inherit Grandfather's millions . . ." t.i.tus prodded a perfectly grilled piece of bacon with his fork and sighed. He couldn't keep this up. The breakfast smelled like heaven, suns.h.i.+ne poured into his bedroom, and Pandora looked as if she was about to burst with excitement.