The Dire King (Jackaby #4)(55)

“This is not my first mission, Seer. It would drop a kobold, hob, or any lesser oddling. Against trollkin, however, it has the opposite effect,” she grunted. “Increases violent tendencies.”

“Best not to do that, then,” Jackaby said.

Serif’s cheeks puffed out and the pipe made a soft thoom. I pushed my head up to peer through the scratchy thatch. A muscular troll carrying a cudgel the size of a small child slapped at his neck as though bitten by a mosquito. He spun angrily, his lips curled back in a snarl.

“You missed,” said Jackaby.

“I really didn’t.”

The big troll glared at the swarm of brownies fluttering in the air behind him and swung the cudgel through the cloud, which scattered and chittered angrily. The cudgel, finding very little resistance from the brownies, slammed instead into the back of a pale giant who sat hunched over in the dirt. The giant unfolded. He was so massive, he could have leaned casually with his elbow on the head of one of the ogres we had fought earlier. Beneath ice-white hair and pallid skin, he wore a simple tunic that might have doubled as the sail of a Spanish galleon.

“Oh. Oh my. That’s got the j?tun’s attention now,” Jackaby said. “This is the plan?”

“Wait for it.”

The j?tun rose to his feet. The troll clutched his cudgel and looked up. And then he looked farther up. The ground beneath the j?tun began to glitter with spreading crystals of ice. The j?tun raised one enormous foot and stomped. The building beneath us shook. In a circle all around the j?tun, creatures were thrown to their backs and dusted by a glittering flurry of ice. Even from our hiding spot, I felt the wave of cold wash over us. There was now a cloud of sparkling mist surrounding the troll and everyone next to him. The monsters at the far end of the assembly were craning their necks to see the frost giant, who was only visible from the waist up. The sounds of scuffling and snarling were coming from within the icy mist at his feet. It was pandemonium.

“Now,” said Serif.





Chapter Twenty-Two

As the sounds of the furious brawl came muffled through the thatch, Serif carved a hole at the back side of the roof and slipped out. We followed, padding as quietly as we could after her across the grass. By now the sun was high in the sky, and shadows were getting scarce. Part of me would have liked to tuck myself into a ball up in that attic and stay there until everything was over, but I gritted my teeth and forced my legs to pump, and we sprinted the last stretch. We were in plain view of the courtyard for only a few seconds, and even though the attention of the crowd remained fixed on the scuffle in the back, my heart was still pounding in my chest by the time we reached the far side of the hold, tucking ourselves under the cover of the creaky scaffolding.

“There’s a charm on the whole building,” Jackaby observed. He blinked at the stone. “It’s strong.”

“Defensive?” Serif asked.

“Protective. Hold on—” He pulled a series of little glass lenses from his pocket and peered at the stone through them. Serif glanced around impatiently. “The whole tower is held together by a net of magic. Probably necessary, by the looks of it. They’ve torn right through the support walls.”

“Just a coherence charm, then?” said Serif. “No defensive hexing or barrier spells?”

“None that I can see,” said Jackaby. “But there’s all sorts of energy on the inside that I can’t understand. Best proceed with caution.”

“Hm. You’re a bit useful after all, Seer,” Serif grunted. She scrabbled up the scaffolding, holding her injured arm against her side as she pulled herself up one-handed. Jackaby and I followed. Halfway up the wall, we reached a cleft in the stones large enough to peer through. Jackaby pressed his face up against the gap, and when he pulled away he did not look happy. I slid up to have a look for myself.

The hold was a mess of copper and bronze. Somewhere down below, massive turbines were humming; I could feel the vibration of them through the stone. Clockwork ranging in size from carriage wheels to cogs took up an entire story of the tower. Somewhere above us, light crackled and popped, a golden-yellow glow with flashes of electric blue illuminating the bricks and metalwork. Heavy girders were bolted to the stone, and a staircase snaked up around the tower, following the curve of the wall. The remnants of a demolished landing were visible a few feet above us.

“I can’t tell if the machine is at the top of the tower or the bottom,” I said.

“I believe the machine is the tower,” said Jackaby behind me. “There are unnatural energies running in and out of every inch of the building. The power it’s generating is incomprehensible. Well, not generating, per se. Channeling. Directing. I think we’ve found our spear.”

“Our spear?” I said, pulling my eyes away from the sight.

“Hafgan’s spear was never a real spear. It was a metaphor. The spear grips the hand that grips the spear. Power takes hold of those who take hold of power.”

“Do you suppose that’s why Hafgan went bad?” I said. “Maybe he really did start out with the best intentions, but then power changed him? That would explain why Arawn had to kill him—why Arawn was able to kill him at all, even with the twain’s shield protecting him.”

“It fits. All this time we’ve been thinking of Morwen’s sword as the new spear, but it’s not at all, is it? The blade was just a tool. The Dire Council created a machine to do the same thing, to channel the sort of power no single soul was ever meant to control. The first attempt was destroyed a decade ago—Jenny’s fiancé saw to that when he gave up his life to sabotage its construction—but it has been remade. And by the look of it, they’ve gotten it right this time.”