‘She hardly abandoned you,’ Schmidt pointed out. ‘You double crossed her.’
‘Well, it’s the same thing,’ Lex snapped irritably.
He stalked across a snow-swept path leading away from the crystal forest and towards the city. Schmidt hurried after him and, falling into step beside him, said, ‘What’s your plan?’
Lex glanced at him. ‘Why do you always assume I have a plan? I’m just going into the city to see if I can find some Gods.’
‘Is that it?’
‘That’s all I got,’ he said with a shrug.
As Lex had suspected, finding the Gods did not prove to be problematic. Most of the Gods were not omniscient, but they were sharp-eyed, and forbidden trespassers in their realm were not likely to go unnoticed for very long. Lex and Schmidt had only just started to walk down one of the skyscraper-lined streets when two startled-looking Gods appeared in front of them in human form. Lex recognised them from their statues. One was Deryn, God of Music and the other was Saydi, Goddess of Beauty and owner of Lex’s favourite sun.
‘No, no, no!’ Deryn exclaimed in a distinctly whiny tone as Lex and Schmidt automatically bowed. ‘You’re ruining the Race!’
‘What Race?’ Lex asked, straightening up from his bow.
‘ This one,’ Saydi said, waving her arm to encompass the city and glaring at them. ‘It’s ongoing! It’s the longest one in our history and you humans are ruining it. You’re not supposed to be down here!’
Lex glanced at the transparent buildings and gasped as he realised, for the first time, that there were people moving about in them and, like the buildings themselves, they were made entirely of glass.
‘Are they alive?’ Lex asked, still staring at them.
‘They’re half alive,’ Saydi snapped, then she paused and stared at Lex. ‘You look just like the other one,’ she said. ‘Except you’re wearing different clothes. And you’re not bleeding so much.’
‘You’ve seen my brother?’ Lex said eagerly. ‘My brother, Lucius? Is he okay? He got down here by mistake. We’ve just come to get him and then we’ll gladly be on our way.’
‘No, no, no; we simply cannot have humans down here; it just won’t do! You must be made examples of,’ Deryn said irritably.
‘What’s the point in separating the Lands Above and Beneath if humans are going to contaminate both? You’re too unpredictable — you ruin the Races,’ Saydi complained. ‘It’s like trying to play chess with chessmen who won’t follow the rules — it undermines the point of even playing at all.’
‘Well… what is a Race?’ Lex asked, giving the glass city a puzzled look. If this was a sort of Game then where were the castles and dragons and other mortal perils?
‘It’s a Race of Progression,’ Deryn said. ‘It’s taken our men hundreds of years to get this far. They started out living in caves but just last year they built their first spaceship and started exploring the orbiting underworlds. You humans will never reach such a level because you squabble with each other all the time and it hinders your progress. If one of our glass men comes into contact with you they could be infected with unstable emotions and the entire Race would be in jeopardy then. They wouldn’t do what we told them to any more. They’d start thinking for themselves. Come along. We’ll put you in with the other one.’
And Lex and Schmidt found themselves plucked from the ground by the Gods and deposited some way from the city before a huge, hulking monster of a crystal tree that stood all alone. This was what Lex had seen when he’d had that funny moment out on the Space Ladders. The alarming amount of scarlet blood splattered around the base of the tree was in sharp contrast to the snow, and Lex’s heart seemed to lodge in his throat at the sight of it.
A crystal ladder fixed to a branch near the top joined up with the lowest Space Ladder and led on past the twilight sky into dark space above them. The Lands Above couldn’t be seen beyond the great mass of Space Ladders but they knew it was up there. Unlike the crystal trees they’d seen in the forest with multi-coloured leaves, the leaves of this tree were all golden — pale and beautiful like they’d been painted with sunshine. There were other snow-covered cities in the distance and Lex guessed that other Gods were playing their own Progression Races in these although there was a still, unbroken silence all around them. In the distance was a sparkling crystal mountain where the Gods lived when they weren’t playing Races with the glass men in the glass cities.
Tearing his eyes away from the incredible sights on the horizon, Lex turned back to the tree. The trunk itself was at least twenty feet in diameter and curled up in the middle of this was Lucius, head bent over a bloody ferret that was clutched to his chest and seemed to have gone rigid with fear. In another moment, Lex and Schmidt had been put in the crystal tree with him.
‘Lucius, are you all right?’ Lex asked, striding over to him, trying to work out where the blood on his arms and on the ferret was coming from.
Lucius jumped at the sound of his brother’s voice. After a moment of stunned surprise he scrambled to his feet, clutching the ferret with one hand and flinging his other arm around Lex’s neck in a suffocating hug.
‘Oh, Lex. I hoped the enchanter wouldn’t find you too. I’m sorry he got you but I’m so glad to see you!’
For once Lex allowed himself to be hugged — even hugging Lucius back for a moment before pushing him away and running a sharp eye down him.
‘Who’s bleeding? You or Zachary?’
‘It’s me.’ Lucius awkwardly held out his arms. ‘When I arrived here I fell on the crystal flowers at the bottom of the tree out there.’
Lex glanced out of their tree prison and saw that the blood outside was indeed staining the remains of the broken crystal flowers responsible for the deep cuts on Lucius’s arms. Lex rolled his eyes. It was just like Lucius to fall straight over into the deepest patch of jagged crystal he could find as soon as he arrived.
‘I just put my hands out automatically when I fell,’ Lucius said, looking at his worst arm miserably and turning even paler at the sight of the blood dripping from it.
‘Don’t hold it out like that,’ Lex said impatiently. ‘You need to stop the bleeding. Here, use the weasel.’
Lex took the unresisting ferret out of Lucius’s hand and pressed him over the deep cuts on his brother’s arm.
‘Hold him there,’ he ordered. ‘For God’s sake, Lucius, do you want to bleed to death?’
Lex, Lucius and Schmidt all jumped as Deryn knocked on the glass trunk of their prison. ‘Hey! Humans!’ Although the trunk of the tree was thick, they could all hear the God’s voice as clearly as if he were standing right beside them. ‘We can’t leave you here like this,’ Deryn went on. ‘We don’t know whether to turn you all into glass people and let you stay down here or whether to kill you and send you back to the Lands Above as a warning to the others not to come. Any preferences?’
They all stared at him in horror. ‘There isn’t a third choice by any chance, is there?’ Lex asked. ‘Like, maybe, you sending us back to the Lands Above alive? All in one piece?’
‘No,’ the God said coldly. ‘You’ve got two choices. Pick one or we’ll pick for you.’
When the three humans just continued to stare at him stupidly, Deryn turned away with a sigh and started having a muttered conversation with Saydi.
Lex turned to Schmidt. ‘I’m going to have to use the hat.’
‘If you do, you won’t survive,’ Schmidt said sharply. ‘Give it to me. I’ll do it. You’ve already used it once today.’
‘That’s very noble of you, Mr Schmidt,’ Lex said, smiling. ‘But I don’t think it will work. You’re old and frail, after all, so the hat would be more dangerous to you than to me. And I doubt you’d be able to do any magic with it anyway.’
‘Give it to Lucius then,’ Schmidt said. ‘He hasn’t used it at all yet.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Lucius asked.
Lex glanced at Lucius but he could tell at once that it was no good. His twin was even paler than usual and had obviously lost a fair amount of blood. He probably wouldn’t be able to get them all out even if given the chance. It was going to have to be Lex or no one at all.