The lights flickered on as we entered the Armoury proper. It s really just a long series of interconnected stone chambers with bare plastered walls, curved ceilings high above, and mile upon mile of multicoloured wiring tacked carelessly into place across the walls, crisscrossing in patterns that may or may not have meant something to somebody at some time. All the overhead fluorescent lights were working, but I realised immediately that I couldn t hear the usual strained sounds of the air-conditioning. The air was stale, but there was no smell of smoke or sign of fire damage.
I don t see any signs of a firefight, said Molly, looking quickly about her. No bullet holes, no energy burns or anything more extreme to suggest the people here fought back
No, I said. But there has been a hell of a lot of looting. Look at all the gaps. I m not seeing half the things I should be seeing. No computers, no weapons. Even the shooting range is empty. It s all so quiet. I don t think I ve ever heard the Armoury this quiet before. There was always something going on; Uncle Jack or his assistants working on some new way to blow themselves and everybody else up. It s eerie.
I walked slowly between deserted workstations and abandoned testing grounds that should have been full of loud noises and general excitement as Uncle Jack s technicians happily risked their own lives and others testing appalling new weapons of mass disturbance. Nothing had been destroyed in the Armoury, unlike in the War Room or the Operations Room, but the enemy had stripped the place clean. They hadn t been interested in precious pieces of art that would have sold for millions, but state-of-the-art weapons? Those were different. I checked everywhere, but there were no golden-armoured bodies, no heads on spikes, not even a splash of dried blood. A few things had been overturned here and there, but no signs of any struggle. Which was just wrong. No matter what the odds or the threats, Uncle Jack and his lab rats would have fought to the last to keep the Armoury out of the hands of our enemies. Hell, Uncle Jack would have blown the whole place up before he d risk letting Drood weapons fall into the wrong hands. So why didn t he?
I stopped and looked about me in frustration. This would have broken Uncle Jack s heart, I said finally.
To see his precious Armoury stripped bare
Molly nodded understandingly. The Armoury was always his pride and joy. Eddie, the information in his head would have made him invaluable. Do you think?
I don t know, I said. I don t know what to think anymore. Hello. What s this?
I knelt down beside a workstation. Something had caught my eye, but I wasn t sure what. It turned out to be a small black blob on the floor. Molly crouched down beside me, looked at the blob and then looked at me.
All right; I ll bite. What s so significant about a small black blobby thing? What is it?
It s a portable door, I said. Uncle Jack used to hand them out like travel-sickness pills to every agent going out in the field. Just slap one of these against any flat surface, and hey, presto! Instant door!
So why did he stop handing them out? said Molly, instantly cautious.
Something about unacceptable side effects, I said, weighing the blob in my hand. And if the Armourer thought they were unacceptable This must have been overlooked.
Take it anyway, said Molly. We re going to need all the help we can get.
Damn right, I m taking it, I said. I slipped the thing into my pocket, straightened up and looked around me. It s useful, but it s not a weapon. I want something that goes bang! in a horribly destructive and disturbing way.
And then my head snapped round suddenly as a Voice said Eddie! I looked back and forth, but there was no one else in the Armoury. I looked at Molly.
Tell me you heard that, too.
Of course I heard it! Someone said your name in a seriously spooky way. But I scanned the whole place before we came in here, and I am telling you we re the only ones here. No other life signs anywhere, and that includes lab specimens. So who Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I m getting something.
She moved slowly between the empty workstations, turning her head back and forth, scowling fiercely as she searched for something she could sense but not see. I was concentrating on the Voice. It had definitely sounded familiar but I couldn t place it. I knew I d heard someone call me by my name in just that tone of voice before, but Molly stopped suddenly before a pile of junk on the floor and cried out triumphantly. She knelt down and stuck both hands into the pile before I could stop her, and pulled out the Merlin Glass. She jumped up to show it to me, brandishing the small silver-backed hand mirror.
Result! This is more like it, Eddie!
Could you please stop waving it around so heartily, I said carefully. That is a very powerful and very dangerous object, and this is the Armoury, after all. The Glass was worrying enough as it was, before it got broken in Castle Shreck, and God alone knows what state it s in now after Uncle Jack s been tinkering with it.
Molly sniffed airily but wasted no time in pressing the Glass into my hands. I accepted it cautiously and looked it over. The Glass had been created for the Drood family by Merlin Satanspawn, way back in the day, and it had many useful properties. But it had been very badly damaged during the Drood assault on the Immortals at Castle Shreck, to the point where it didn t work at all anymore. The reflective surface had been cracked from side to side, and given that a whole lot of people thought there might be something or even someone trapped within the reflection, I made a point of handing the damaged mirror over to the Armourer first chance I got, with strict instructions to drop it somewhere secure, like a black hole, if he couldn t mend the thing and make it safe to use. Frankly, I d never expected to see the thing again.
But here it was, back in my hand. And completely uncracked. The Glass was clear and unmarked, as though it had never seen any damage at all.
I didn t know the Merlin Glass could speak, Molly said doubtfully. Let alone call out to you.
Maybe it never had anything to say before, I said. But this is a magical instrument, after all, made by Merlin himself.
You said the mirror was cracked. Now it isn t. Could it have repaired itself?
Who knows? I said. I don t think anyone in the family knows for sure anymore why Merlin gave the Glass to us in the first place. Or what it was supposed to do. I never did get around to reading all the instructions Uncle Jack wrote out for me. I have to say I don t think the Armourer did this. I mean, he s good, yes, but he s no Merlin Satanspawn.
I hefted the hand mirror thoughtfully, turning it back and forth and checking every detail. Something about it didn t look right, didn t feel right. I d held it often enough, used it often enough, to know that the weight and heft of it in my hand now was subtly, unnervingly different. Wrong. I said as much to Molly.
Are you sure? she said immediately. I mean, it has been repaired. There are bound to be some differences.
It s not that. I ve handled the bloody thing often enough to know that something s not right about it! It s never something you just take for granted; with an artefact this powerful, it s like juggling a live hand grenade every time you use it.
I turned the hand mirror over and studied the design on the back. The silver scrollwork was definitely different. I showed it to Molly, and she traced the raised edges with a fingertip.
There s some kind of inscription worked into the design, but I m damned if I can make head or tail of it, she said finally. Not Celtic, not Sumerian not Kandarian or Enochian It is vaguely familiar, but I can t get my head around it.