“Not bad,” said Esmeralda, gazing up at the machine. “Not bad at all!”
The colossal orrery was supported on a heavy pillar of black wrought iron from which thick, twisted metal cables stretched down, bolting the entire shuddering thing to the floor. High above their heads, great arms and levers revolved, jutting out like spokes from a hub of cogwheels and gears and ratchets and sprockets that squealed and squeaked and clanged and hummed and whirred and rumbled.
Trundle guessed that there must be more than a thousand metal arms projecting out from the top of the machine, all of different lengths and all moving at different speeds. And hanging from each arm was a globe, some made of iron, some of brass or copper or bronze, others of gold and silver and lead.
And endlessly circling the foot of the iron pillar, six weasels on bicycles attached to great clanking chains pedaled away to provide the power that operated the whole towering device.
A number of important-looking badgers in purple robes were busy at desks and lecterns, scribbling intently in large ledgers.
“What is it for?” Trundle breathed as he stared up at the constantly revolving balls of shining metal.
“It’s an accurate model of every inhabited and charted island in the whole of the Sundered Lands,” Percy explained. He pointed to a large golden ball moving in a slow, majestic circle close to the centre of the machine. “That is Widdershins,” he said. He pointed again. “And over there are Neep and Willowland and Wildrock.” He stabbed his finger to and fro. “And Drumcloggit and Skine and Hernswick and Drune.” He pointed to a portly old badger with a fur-lined gown of purple silk. “That is the orrery master,” he said. “Every evening it is his solemn duty to bring the orrery to a halt and to fetch ladders and to take rulers and calipers and other measuring devices and make scores of tiny but vital adjustments, so that the orrery is always one hundred percent accurate.”
Esmeralda stared at him. “You mean they have to tinker with this thing every single night?” she asked incredulously. “That’s got to be the most mind-boggling waste of time ever!”
Percy frowned. “The quest for scientific perfection is never a waste of time, young lady,” he said firmly.
“Says you!” retorted Esmeralda.
“Is the Dean of Forgotten Geography here?” asked Trundle, anxious to prevent an argument between his friends.
“Yes he is. Come along with me,” Percy said, a little sharply, Trundle thought. “And, Esmeralda, please try not to tell the dean that his life’s work is entirely meaningless, if you can manage that.”
“I’ll do my best,” she replied genially. “But it won’t be easy!”
They came upon the Dean of Forgotten Geography rummaging through the lower shelves of a bookcase and mumbling to himself.
He was an elderly and rather frail-looking badger with a gray muzzle and huge, pale watery eyes that peered weakly from behind thick spectacles.
“My most convivial greetings to you, my dear Dean,” said Percy, speaking in a very formal and rather pompous voice.
“And to you, Herald,” replied the Dean, straightening up with a creak and a grimace. “And what brings you to this far-flung corner of the guild, my dear sir?”
“Something of great interest and moment has come to my attention, Dean,” Percy pronounced, taking the wooden box from Trundle’s hands. “Something that I feel certain will pique your academic interest.”
“Indeed, my good Herald?” asked the Dean. “And pray what might that be?”
“This receptacle contains a piece of parchment upon which has been inscribed an alliterative fragment of doggerel, which I firmly believe—”
“Oh, will you pair of old fogies cut the cackle, please!” interrupted Esmeralda, snatching the box from Percy’s hands and tipping up the lid. “Just read the poem, Dean,” she said. “And then tell us—uh-oh!”
Trundle stared uneasily at her. “Uh-oh?” he said. “What kind of uh-oh?”
A moment later he knew exactly what kind of uh-oh it was as the wooden box began to shudder and strain in Esmeralda’s arms. There was a fizzing sound and a hissing sound and suddenly a ball of blue fire leaped out of the box, spinning up into the air and shooting out bolts of vivid blue lightning in all directions. The Crown of Wood had come alive again!
“Goodness gracious!” pronounced the Dean, his spectacles falling from his snout. “May I inquire the purpose of this unparalleled exhibition, my dear Herald?”
“Later, Dean. For the moment, I suggest we all take cover!” yelled Percy, grabbing the dean and diving under a nearby desk. Bolts of sizzling lightning were careering backward and forward and upward and downward through the huge chamber, spitting and roaring and shedding sparks as they collided and ricocheted at dizzying speed.
Trundle winced as he saw several streaks of blue lightning strike the machinery at the top of the orrery. The effect was startling. The whole cumbersome device began to speed up, the helpless cycling weasels yelling and shrieking as their little legs went pumping up and down faster and faster on the pedals of their out-of-control bicycles.
And as Trundle watched, the hanging globes began to spin in an ever-widening arc, blue lightning flickering from ball to ball while more lightning crackled along the arms and in among the intricate mechanism.
The orrery spun faster and faster. The metal balls became entangled with one another, and a few broke loose and went crashing through the windows like cannonballs. Smoke rose from the hub of the device. Cogwheels and sprockets showered down like shrapnel. The whine of the spinning machine turned to a demented howl.
And then, with a final shriek of overburdened gears and shearing pinwheels, the whirling orrery started to fly apart.
“Everybody down!” yelled Esmeralda.
Trundle didn’t need telling twice.
As he lay there on his face, with his arms up over his head and with total mayhem breaking out above him, it struck him that “uh-oh” had probably been a bit of an understatement.
The horrible grinding and screeching of the exploding machinery filled Trundle’s ears as he lay on the floor of the wrecked orrery chamber. Globes and levers and cogs and gears bounced all around him, and playing over everything was the sizzling and spitting blue lightning that had caused all the chaos.
He lifted his head, worried for Esmeralda. She was sitting under a lectern with her hands over her ears and her eyes screwed shut. Something came bouncing across the floor toward her, spraying blue sparks.
“Watch out!” Trundle cried.
Esmeralda’s eyes snapped open, and she gave a yelp of alarm, holding out her arms to fend off the object.
She seemed as surprised as Trundle as the glowing ball plopped neatly into her two paws, smoking a little and making a soft whirring noise.
“Oh, well held!” gasped Trundle, lifting himself up as Esmeralda sat blinking at the dented brass ball resting quietly between her hands.
The orrery chamber was a terrible mess. Several of the windows had been shattered, and there was debris all over the floor from the ruined remnants of the orrery. The great device itself stood at a crazy angle, its arms bent and buckled, its few remaining globes all tangled up together. Among the rubble, the six weasel cyclists could be seen staggering around in circles and falling over. Here and there, purple-robed badgers were picking themselves up with dazed expressions.
Percy crawled out from under the desk and slammed the lid down on the wooden box.
The orrery master was standing ankle-deep in bits of machinery, staring up with anguished eyes at the steaming remnants of his beloved device, whimpering a little and gnawing distractedly at a leather-bound ledger that he was twisting between his hands.
“Great merciful Fates!” gasped a voice as the Dean of Forgotten Geography emerged from under the desk on hands and knees. “My good herald! What in all of Sundered Lands have you done?”
“It was an accident, I can assure you, my very good dean,” said Percy as he helped the elderly gentlema
n to his feet. “Most regrettable. Entirely unforeseeable! I had no idea . . . really—no slightest expectation!”
“That was pretty spectacular!” gasped Esmeralda, scrambling up. She stared at the brass ball between her paws. “And I don’t think it was no accident, Perce!” she added, grinning wildly. “It was the Fates what did this, and no mistake!” She brandished the globe under his snout. “All this was meant to happen—which means I was meant to be given this.” She turned to the bewildered Dean. “Tell me quickly now, which island does this represent?”
The dean blinked at her. “I beg your pardon?” he gasped, as though he could hardly believe his ears.
“Listen, Grandpa,” Esmeralda said—rather rudely, Trundle thought. “I’m betting every prickle on my head that the Crown of Stone is on the island represented by this ball of brass. So, come on, which one is it?”
“She could very well be right, Dean,” added Percy, taking the ball from Esmeralda and handing it to the shaky-pawed old dean. “Which island is it?”
As though in a dream, the dean took the battered ball and turned it slowly in his paws, peering intently at it. “There should be a serial number,” he muttered. “Around the equator. But I’d need my spectacles . . .”
“Oh, give it back here,” said Esmeralda, snatching the ball. “Yes! Here we are! The number is six three nine four five two seven seven eight zero four two six eight one four three two seven six nine zero two two two five three seven eight.”
“It’s intact,” said the dean. “That’s good—but to find the identity of the island in question, we will need to consult the comprehensive compendia in the antechamber of geographic certitudes.” He gazed around himself. “But really . . . it seems somewhat incongruous to be doing such research while the poor orrery master has suffered such a catastrophic disaster!”
“There is little to be done for the orrery master at the moment,” said Percy, ushering the dean toward a small side door. “And the finding of the island may lead to one of the most important scientific discoveries of the past two thousand years, my good dean!”
“Oh? Indeed?” said the dean. “Well, in that case . . .”
The dean opened the door and led them into a small antechamber. Esmeralda and Trundle whipped through, and Percy closed the door firmly on their backs, shutting out the pitiful sobbing of the orrery master.
The dean gave Percy a concerned look. “Should you not first of all explain to me what just happened, my dear herald? The object in that box is clearly a source of great potency. From whence does it come and what is its purpose?”
“I shall write a treatise on it, my good dean,” Percy said briskly. “And you shall be the first to read it, I can assure you. In the meantime, what of the island?”
“Well, now,” said the dean, turning and walking along a bookcase filled with huge old tomes. “The prefix six three nine four means that we need to look in Pountney’s Guide to Dull Places.”
The Dean fetched some stepladders on wheels. He climbed to a high shelf and perused the books up there while Esmeralda read out the numbers again.
“I have it!” the dean said at last, heaving a book off the shelf and tottering down the steps with it in his arms.
He took the book to a lectern and, slipping white kid gloves onto his hands, he opened it and carefully turned the pages. He had Esmeralda recite the numbers yet again as he turned page after page.
“Here it is!” the dean said, leaning close and adjusting his spectacles. “Oh, dear me, what a disappointment.”
“Don’t tell me it doesn’t exist anymore!” groaned Esmeralda.
“Oh, it exists, sure enough,” said the Dean. “But it’s a miserable flat little island. There’s nothing of interest there at all. It’s well off the main trading routes—very dull indeed. It’s called Trembling Plain.”
“That’s the place mentioned in the rhyme!” Trundle yelled excitedly. “Esmeralda, you were right! The Fates are still on our side!”
“So where is this island, Mr. Dean, mate?” asked Esmeralda. “And how do we get there?”
The dean peered at her. “I have no idea, young lady,” he said. “You would need to consult the orrery to learn that.”
“What?” howled Trundle and Esmeralda in chorus.
“Oh, no!” groaned Percy, his hand to his brow.
“I’m sure the master will put the orrery back together again as quickly as he can,” said the Dean.
“And how quickly might that be?” asked Trundle.
“I would imagine it will be up and running again within a hundred years,” said the Dean. “It’s a tricky business, you know. He will need to consult all the old archives.”
“We don’t have a hundred years, matey!” howled Esmeralda. “We’re on a deadline here—and there are pirates and evil aunts to worry about.”
“Is there no other way of learning more of this island, my dear dean?” asked Percy.
The dean frowned. “Well, this book is more than a thousand years old,” he said. “It’s quite possible that the island has a different name these days. Many do, you know—the history of etymology is a most fascinating subject. For instance—”
“Never mind all that!” shrieked Esmeralda. “How do we find out what the island is called now?”
“By consulting Doctor Gleek’s Relegated Atlas,” said the Dean.
They waited impatiently while he fetched the book in question.
Trundle could see that even Percy was boiling over with the suspense as the old dean worked his way slowly through the atlas.
“Here’s the entry,” said the dean at long last. “Well, well, I was right! Trembling Plain became Quivering Plain about nine hundred years ago. And then, two centuries later, it says here that the island was being called Quiverplain.”
“Not helping!” growled Esmeralda.
“And then, about five hundred years ago, the authorities altered the name to Quiverstones,” the Dean continued. “And finally, not much more than a hundred years ago, the name was finally changed to Shiverstones.”
“Shiverstones?” hooted Trundle. “You mean the sixth crown is in Shiverstones?”
“Bless my soul!” gasped Percy.
“Right back where we started!” squealed Esmeralda. “Wheee-oooh! Who’d have thought it?”
The distant, dull, sonorous clanging of a bell broke into their astonishment.
“Ahh, the cloister tocsin,” said the Dean. “Word must have spread of the disaster with the orrery. No doubt Professor Brockwise will wish to see us all and learn how the catastrophe came about.” He adjusted his spectacles. “The highmost chancellor will be most interested in the contents of that box, to be sure!”
“Lawks!” exclaimed Esmeralda. “That’ll never do! We have to get out of here!”
“No, no, child,” said Percy. “We shall take the box straight to His Nibs. As the dean says, Professor Brockwise will be most fascinated to learn what we have within!”
Trundle felt he should point out that this was probably a really bad idea. Last time they had met up with the highmost chancellor, he had chased them with his stick and set the guards on them. But before he could speak, Percy turned his back on the dean and gave them a long, slow wink.
“Oh, yes!” said Esmeralda, catching on straightaway. “Let’s do exactly that.”
“I think we’ll take the back way,” Percy said, heading for a door in the far wall of the small antechamber. “It’ll be quicker.”
And before the dean was given the chance to say anything more, the three of them had whisked out through the door and were pattering at quite a speed along a deserted corridor.
“Where are we really going?” asked Trundle.
“My private quarters,” puffed Percy. “If we’re going to get away from here and find that last crown, we’ll need to be sharp! His Nibs may be a doddery old twit, but even he has the wits to have us arrested while he finds out what happened to the orrery.”
“Uh, Perce?” asked
Esmeralda. “When you say ‘we’—do you mean you’re coming with us?”
Percy smiled at her. “If you’ll have me,” he said.
“You bet we will!” said Trundle. That was the best news he’d heard for a long time. With a total brainbox like Percy on board, nothing could stop them.
The final crown was all but theirs!
And to think—after all their racing about across the length and width of the Sundered Lands, the Crown of Stone had been in Shiverstones all along!
Amazing!
Trundle was surprised by the gloominess of Percy’s private quarters. The main room that he showed them into was fusty and dusty and musty and cobwebby. The windows were grimy and the shabby furniture was of somber colors.
“You actually live here, Percy?” asked Esmeralda, staring around with a wrinkling snout.
“Indeed,” Percy replied. “I’m lucky. College Fellows of lesser importance have much more depressing quarters.”
“Hard to imagine that,” Esmeralda muttered under her breath.
For Trundle, the most disturbing thing in the room was the heavy carved frieze that ran around the top of the walls. It was made of black wood and depicted a host of strange and unsettling creatures. The statuettes that Trundle liked least of all were the ravens. There were a lot of them—grim-looking birds, many chipped or broken or with missing heads and wings, staring down at them with their beady black eyes . . . and looking a little too realistic for his liking!
“If we’re making a run for it, we ought to take the crowns with us, Percy,” said Esmeralda.
“So we shall,” agreed the Herald, opening a cupboard and rummaging about in it, flinging out odds and ends as he waded in deeper.
“How are we going to carry them about?” Trundle asked. “I mean, without them doing that thing they do when they’re together?” He looked at Esmeralda. “Could you use some of your Roamany magic to keep them quiet?” he asked.
“That’s a bit out of my league, Trun,” said Esmeralda, rubbing her snout.