The Dire King (Jackaby #4)(69)

“We can’t keep this up,” Jackaby grunted as he felled another shambling corpse.

“I know a way,” came a woman’s voice behind us. We both turned.

Alina stood there, flinching at the sounds of the battle all around her. “I found it,” she said. “You can’t stop this fight from here, Detective. You need to do what you came here to do in the first place. We need to get you back to that machine. I—I can take you there.”

Jackaby eyed her curiously. “Lead the way.”

Returning to the Annwyn through the church would have been unthinkable. Within the ruins, the dead had fallen and risen again angry—but Alina had found a smaller rend around the back of the church, near the tree line. Jackaby went first. The sounds of the battle faded as we crossed into the Annwyn. We emerged to face a familiar landscape. After the deafening clamor, Hafgan’s Hold was unsettlingly silent.

Alina’s path had led us almost directly behind the tower. Stones littered the ground all around the keep, but just as many remained suspended in midair by the power of the cohesion charm. As silently as possible, we climbed through the spiraling, weightless debris into the ruined keep. The generators hummed loudly. An Unseelie soldier, a troll, had climbed into one of the metal frames at the base of the tower for his chance to become a great and powerful Dire Warrior, but something had gone horribly wrong. The wretch’s arm had become stuck in the metalwork. The process had made him larger still, and thus more inexorably stuck. Unable to pull free, the troll had warped to a grotesque parody of his original shape.

“It is a power that burns,” Jackaby recalled.

The Dire King was up there, I mouthed. Alina bit her lip and looked as though she wanted to run. She took a deep breath and kept with us. The stairway, although supported by nothing but empty air, held our weight without crumbling. Several of the stairs were badly cracked or missing entirely, but we were able to negotiate them without incident. None of us said a word in the foreboding silence as we ascended. When we reached the third floor, Jackaby again took the lead. He crested the landing gingerly, and then rose to his full height, peering around. The machinery hummed loudly, a thrumming, rhythmic buzz.

“Where is the Dire King?” Alina whispered, her eyes darting back and forth.

“Mysteriously absent,” answered Jackaby. His brow was furrowed as he peered around the landing.

“He could be back any moment.” I swallowed. “We need to be quick. This is where he controls it all. Can you see how it works?”

Jackaby climbed up onto the raised control stage. “I can see—hold on. I can see an aura, over there. Human.” Jackaby stepped to the edge to peer down. An inclined platform was set at an angle just below the control panel. A smile broke Jackaby’s brooding face.

“Hatun!” he yelled over the thrum of the machine. “You’re alive! And we’ve come to rescue you!”

“About time!” Hatun called back. She was strapped to the platform by her wrists and ankles. A series of tinted glass discs like giant magnifying glasses hung over her head. “Hey,” she said as Jackaby leaned his head around the lenses to see her clearly. “Is that my knitting?”

“It is!” Jackaby beamed.

“Why are you wearing my new sundries bag on your big head?”

“It is a hat!” Jackaby hollered back, proud and defiant. “And I love it!”

Hatun shook her head. “Are you going to get me out of this thing or not?”

We climbed out onto the ledge. The platform on which Hatun was strapped hung over the demolished edge of the landing. Below us I could see the wretched, deformed troll. Its head twitched. Jackaby undid the straps on the far side, while I got those on the near. Her arm bore a long, deep cut, although the blood was already mostly dry. Very carefully, we helped her off the device. Her steps were shaky.

“This place doesn’t have its walls attached,” she said. “Just a bunch of floating bricks.”

“That’s true,” I told her.

“Hm—you see it, too?” Hatun said. “That’s probably bad. I was hoping that it was just me. Did you see the man with red eyes and the big black hat?”

“The Dire King,” I said. “Do you know where he went?”

Hatun shook her head. “I’m sorry. I feel like a damn fool,” she said. “I came to help, not to be bait locked away in a tower.”

“You’re not a fool. We were all just worried about you,” I said. “Even Hammett came looking for you.”

“You should take Hatun back through the barrier,” said Jackaby. “I’m going to try to see what I can do with this.”

“Can’t we just tear it apart?” I said. I raised the black blade.

“No! No, no, no. Definitely no. That would be exceedingly bad right now. Do you see that metal tank down there? That is a containment reserve. The vital energy of an entire army of highly magical creatures is collected in there. Some of it got pumped into the Unseelie soldiers, but it still contains a massive reserve of power. Releasing that energy now could set off a dangerous blast of untempered magic.”

“Enough to turn someone into a duck?”

“Enough to turn New Fiddleham into a duck,” Jackaby said. “It’s a magic bomb, and it needs to be defused and dismantled.”