Uncle Jack was right on the ball, of course. He rummaged around in his desk drawer and came up with a bulky high-tech thing that looked like it had been cobbled together from half a dozen other items just that morning. And for all I knew, it had. Uncle Jack does love to tinker. He slapped the piece of tech a few times, till it was ready to do what he wanted, and then a dimensional gateway appeared, directly behind the dragon. A great circle cut out of Space, with rogue energies sparking and spitting all around the circumference, and beyond it, a view of Somewhere Else.
Molly muttered a few Words, and the dragon seemed to back away from all the armed figures, retreating through the dimensional gateway and out of the Armoury. The lab assistants pressed forward after it, caught up in the moment, still firing everything they had. They all passed through the gateway, except for the Armourer, who stood his ground. He looked more resigned than upset, as though a suddenly appearing dragon was just another annoyance to interrupt his day.
The massive creature reared up on the other side of the gateway, holding the attention of the lab assistants, so they wouldn’t realise they weren’t inside the Armoury any longer. And also so they wouldn’t realise their weapons weren’t having any effect. Molly shot me a quick grin.
“I’ll have to go join the dragon, or it’ll disappear the moment the gateway closes. I’ll keep the lab assistants occupied for as long as I can, so you can talk with your uncle. But keep it short, Eddie. It only takes one smarter than average lab rat to shout Illusion! and the game’s over.”
She snapped her fingers and teleported away, air rushing in to fill the gap she’d left. I glimpsed her briefly on the other side of the gateway, half hidden behind one of the dragon’s legs. And then the circle snapped shut, and they were all gone. The dragon, the assistants, and Molly. It was suddenly very quiet and peaceful in the Armoury.
I moved out from behind the machine stacks, and headed for the Armourer. He dropped the piece of improvised tech on his desk, and scratched at his bald head thoughtfully. Anyone else would have handled such a powerful piece of equipment more carefully, not to mention respectfully, but the Armourer built his toys to take punishment. He knew they had to work out in the field, often under harsh conditions. He sat down at his workstation and drummed the fingers of one hand on the desktop. I hadn’t got within ten feet of him when his head come up.
“Hello, Eddie. I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away for long.”
“You knew I was here,” I said.
“Of course!” he growled. “I always know . . . Nothing happens in my Armoury that I don’t know about. It’s a necessary survival skill. Even if I am getting old, and tired. I’ve spent too many years buried away down here, Eddie. Time . . . for a change, I think. Time for a younger Drood to come in and take over. Someone who’s got the energy to keep up with all the madness the current crop of lab assistants specialize in. Some days . . . I feel that when I wake up in the morning I should give myself a round of applause just for making it through the night.”
“Don’t talk like that, Uncle Jack,” I said. “You’ll outlive us all.”
“Well,” said the Armourer, “I am working on something . . .”
He suddenly spun round on his swivel chair, so he could smile at me. I smiled back, pulled up a chair, and sat down opposite him.
“Now,” said the Armourer, “nice to see you again, Eddie. Where’s Molly?”
“Off with the dragon,” I said. “She has to be close, to keep the illusion going. You did know it was . . . Of course you did.”
“How about a nice cup of tea?” said the Armourer. “Maybe a few Jaffa Cakes? No? Then perhaps you’d like to tell me why you’ve turned up here again, so soon after stomping out on the family? And please tell me you have Mother’s little black box. Everyone else was going crazy looking for it, when they weren’t accusing each other of taking it.”
“I’ve put it somewhere safe,” I said. “But that’s not why I’m here.”
I felt the need to choose my words carefully, so I sat back in my chair and looked around. The Armourer’s desk was covered with assorted scraps of unnatural technology, where he was working on a dozen different things at once, as usual. His computer was wrapped in mistletoe and long strings of garlic; I’ve never liked to ask why. And there were papers all over the place, designs and lists and results, all covered with the Armourer’s usual unreadable scrawl. I looked back at my uncle Jack. He was still sitting patiently, but I wasn’t ready, so I looked round at the Armoury.
It hadn’t changed much, but then, it never did. For all the destructive and appallingly dangerous things that happened all over the place on a regular basis, the Armoury itself was extremely resilient. A massive stone cavern, it was set deep in the bedrock under the West Wing. Originally the family’s wine cellars, it was all bare plaster walls now, decorated with multicoloured spaghetti of electrical wiring, tacked up all over the place. Some of it hung down from the high stone ceiling, in tangled masses that no one had dared tackle in years. The fluorescent lighting was almost brutally bright, so anything that escaped would have a hard time finding a shadow to hide in, and the air-conditioning grumbled to itself and worked when it felt like it.
Harsh chemical stinks fought it out with the cloying aromas of freshly pressed herbs, along with the lingering smell of cordite that always hung around the firing range. Everywhere you looked, there was always bound to be something interesting and unusual and deeply worrying.
I couldn’t put it off any longer, so I looked back at the Armourer.
“I need your help, Uncle Jack,” I said steadily. “I can’t tell you why, and you can’t tell anyone I was here, or what we talked about. I can only talk to you now because I’m putting all my faith in the Armoury’s shields, to keep out unfriendly eyes and ears.”
“Business as usual,” said the Armourer. “You only ever come to see your old uncle when you want something. What is it this time, Eddie?”
“I need you to tell me all you know about the Regent of Shadows and the Lazarus Stone.”
“Oh bloody hell!” said the Armourer, quite loudly. He glared at me, his mouth a flat, angry line, but I could tell he wasn’t mad at me. He breathed deeply a few times, and thrust his hands deep into his coat pockets. “I always knew that bloody thing would come back to bite us all on the arse, some day. What do you want with that, Eddie? I mean, bringing back people who are supposed to be safely dead and gone . . . as if we didn’t have enough problems already.”
“Isn’t there anyone you’d bring back, if you could?” I said.
He met my gaze coldly. “No. You should know better than to ask that, Eddie. There’s a reason why we don’t allow ghosts to hang around Drood Hall. A reason why we respect our fallen dead, but we don’t listen to them. You can’t look back if you want to keep moving on. We’ve known that in the family for generations. You have to let people go. No matter how much you might miss them.”
“Is that why you told me my parents were dead, for all those years, when you knew they weren’t?” I said.
“That was different,” said the Armourer. “I had to protect you, and them.”
“I know,” I said.
“So many burdens,” said the Armourer. “No wonder I feel tired all the time. But Anything, for the family.”
He looked at me, as though waiting for me to repeat the family creed, and when I didn’t he moved on.
“Now, where was I . . . Oh yes! Yes . . . The Lazarus Stone.” His mouth compressed again, as though nursing a bitter taste. “Certain elements within this family acquired the Stone years ago, almost certainly from some highly disreputable source in the Nightside. And yes, Eddie, I know Droods are banned from that awful place by ancient pacts and agreements. If these members of our family had been found out, there would have been all kinds of repercussions. And there’s no telling where the fallout might have ended. There’s never been any shortage of people in this family who would welcome a chance to go to war against the Nightside. Wipe it out completely, once and for all.”