‘If you had my powers you wouldn’t hesitate to use them,’ he said. ‘You’d give your life without batting an eyelid.’
‘This isn’t negotiable, Perkins. This is about us. Promise me?’
He bit his lip and sighed, then rested his hand on mine. I could feel him trembling.
‘I’m not what you think I am, Jenny, and there was never going to be an us. Not for long, anyway.’
I didn’t say anything. I wanted us to be together but I knew also, deep down, that he was right. He was the only chance we had.
‘I didn’t tell you earlier,’ he said, ‘but Ralph’s Genetic Master Reset wasn’t the only spell I’ve done that I had to burn some of my own life spirit to undertake – the rubberising spell took two years out of me. In fact,’ he said, dropping his gaze, ‘all spelling takes time off me. Every scrap of magic I’ve ever done has exacted a cost measured in weeks, months and years. Truthfully, how old do I look?’
‘I don’t want to hear this,’ I said.
‘You’ve got to, Jenny. How old?’
I stared at him for a moment.
‘Fifty?’
‘I’m sixty-one. Wizidrically induced ageing is kinder to the skin than sun and wind and years. I’m a fraud, Jenny. I can’t do magic – at least, not without shortening my life. You know how old I really am? How long I’ve been on the planet, I mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said as a nasty thought struck me.
‘I’m fourteen, Jenny. I’m not a wizard, I’m a Burner. A one-shot throwaway, and like all Burners, I’m here for one reason only – to shine brightly for a fleeting moment to help others in their time of need.’
I’d never met a Burner, but he was right: they typically lasted only two or three big spells before they had mined their own life spirit to nothing. Some of the finest magicians on the planet had been Burners, who did one fantastic feat of magic, then were gone.
‘No,’ I said, tears springing to my eyes, ‘no more magic. We can put you on other duties when we get back to Kazam.’
He shook his head sadly.
‘It’s all I’ve ever wanted,’ he said, ‘to be magically useful. Jenny, we have been charged to find the Eye of Zoltar, and protect the Princess at all costs. Moobin told me to undertake my duties with “all other considerations secondary”. Moobin wouldn’t have told me that if this quest wasn’t of vital importance.’
He was right. Moobin wouldn’t have taken the decision on his own, either.
‘The greatest sorcerers give everything to their craft, and at least this way I get to spend the rest of my life with you. My mind is made up, Jenny. It’s time you started treating me as what I really am – a useful resource to be expended wisely.’
I looked up at him and gave him a wan smile. I think I loved him more than ever at that particular moment. I’d be married in the fullness of time, and have children, and be widowed and marry again – but my heart, my true heart, the one that loves first and most strongly, would always belong to Perkins.
‘They always said you can’t make relationships within the magic industry,’ I said, wiping my eyes, ‘and some say that magic actively works to prevent it.’
‘Yeah,’ said Perkins, ‘that’s how I see it too.’
There was a pause.
‘“A resource to be expended wisely”?’ I repeated. ‘That’s really how you see yourself?’
He smiled.
‘A bit harsh, yes, but I was trying to make a point. Remember Kevin foresaw I would grow old in the Cambrian Empire? He was right – it’s just happening a bit more quickly than I thought.’
I sighed, pulled out my hair tie and rubbed my fingers through my hair. It was knotted and matted from the three days I’d gone without a bath. I’d been an idiot to think this was anything but a quest. Searches were nice and soft and cuddly and no one need be killed. A quest always demanded the death of a trusted colleague and one or more difficult ethical dilemmas. I’d been in denial. I’d been a fool.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, ‘for dragging you into this.’
‘Nonsense,’ he replied, ‘I came of my own free will. Okay, it’s a serious downer that the Eye of Zoltar isn’t here, but at least we know that for sure. Ten minutes ago we didn’t even know that.’
‘Perhaps – but useless if we can’t get to tell anyone.’
‘Defeatist talk,’ said Perkins, jumping to his feet. ‘We can figure out the Shandar problem when we get home. Let’s kick those drones where it hurts and get you headed for home.’
‘I’m not sure that metaphor works with drones, who have no parts to hurt, but yes, let’s go – what plans do you have to disrupt the Hollow Men?’
‘I’m working on something,’ he said with a smile.
We started to walk towards the archway that led to the gates and the stairway back down, and I turned to take one last look at the large semicircular area, from where the giant Idris would once have considered the cosmos.
‘He wouldn’t have seen much in this low cloud,’ said Perkins, thinking pretty much the same as I.
And that was when we heard a rattle as several things struck the ground behind us. We turned instinctively to investigate, and saw a few human finger bones rolling on the ground. They hadn’t been there before. Perkins and I frowned at one another as an ulna dropped out of the foggy murk above us with a wristwatch still attached by some dried gristle. I picked it up. It wasn’t a watch, it was a wrist altimeter, such as a parachutist or aerialist might wear. There was something engraved on the back.
‘To Shipmate Fly-low Milo, the finest aerialist that ever there was,’ I read.
‘Sounds like pirate grammar to me,’ said Perkins. ‘They missed out everything but the “Arr”.’
‘No, that’s engraved on the strap, look here.’
‘Oh. Right. But what does it mean?’
We both looked up at the tendrils of fog drifting past.
‘The old magic we can sense is the cloud,’ I said. ‘There’s a reason the top of Cadair Idris is constantly swathed in cloud … it’s hiding something.’
I picked up a stone, and threw it upwards as high as I could. There was a noise as the stone hit something, and a second later we jumped aside as a small section of rotted aircraft wing complete with tattered canvas came wheeling out of the fog and crashed to the ground. There was something hidden above us. We couldn’t find Pirate Wolff’s hideout for the very simple reason that it wasn’t meant to be found. That’s the thing about pirates. It’s not wise to underestimate their cunning.
‘If there’s something up there there must be a way of accessing it,’ I said, looking around. ‘We need to find the highest point.’
After a brief scout around in the damp fog, we found it – the high seat back of Idris’ chair, one side of which was twenty feet above the hard stone ground, and the other a precipitous seven-thousand-foot drop through the fog to the valley floor below.
‘Give me a hand,’ I said, and Perkins helped me to climb on to the large stone seat. I looked around to see how to climb farther and found a useful handhold, then a foothold, and then another. The holds were impossible to see from below against the wet stone, but had been definitely cut for a purpose. I had soon climbed upon the seat back, a narrow rock ledge less than six inches wide. I made a mental note that if I were to fall, I would try to land on the safe side of the chair – and when I say ‘safe’ I’m speaking in purely relative terms: a painful drop twenty feet on to wet rock rather than a seven-thousand-foot fall to certain death below. I cautiously stayed low, and reached above my head into the cloud, which here seemed to be thicker and distinctly uncloud-like – more like smoke. My fingers touched nothing, so, with fortune favouring the bold, I stood upright on the narrow ledge, all vision vanishing as my upper body was enveloped by the fog. I was mildly disoriented and my foot slipped on the wet rock, but I regained my footing, my heart beating faster. I stood up straight and reached above my head, straining to touch something. I even stood on
tiptoe, but nothing. I was about to give up and return to firm ground when Kevin’s last message rang out in my head:
You may have to take a leap of faith if you find yourself on the shoulders of a giant.
I was standing on Idris’ chairback, about as close to his long-dead shoulders as I was likely to be, and if this wasn’t a leap of faith, I wasn’t sure what was.
I made a small jump and reached above my head, but felt nothing, and when I landed my feet slipped. For a moment I thought I would fall, but then I regained my balance.
‘Come on, Jenny,’ I said to myself, ‘that was nothing like a leap.’
‘Perkins?’ I called out.
‘Yes?’ came a disembodied voice from below.
‘I’m going to leap.’
‘And trust in providence?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘something better – I’m going to trust in … Kevin.’
And I jumped. Lept, actually. Even today I can’t remember whether I jumped on the cliff side or the summit side, but reasoning it out later it must have been the cliff side. Without the certainty of death, the leap wouldn’t have worked.
Because it did work. I leapt as high and as far as I could and put out my hands, hoping to grab hold of something, and I did. But it wasn’t the rung of a ladder, or a rope. It was a human hand, and it grabbed me tightly around the wrist, held me for a moment and then hauled me up until I was safe. I looked around and blinked, open-mouthed. I had not expected to see what I could see, nor the identity of the person who had just saved me.
The sky pirate’s tale
‘Surprised?’
‘Just a little,’ I said, looking around. I was still in cloud but sitting on a small, gently undulating platform that I soon figured was the distinctively broad flat skull of a Leviathan, and what’s more, that it was floating in mid-air and supporting my weight. I knew the Leviathan was lighter than air, but I had not taken the next logical step to suppose the bones would remain so after death. To one side of me was a spiral staircase, made of Leviathan bones, which vanished upwards into the gloom, and on the other side of me was the man who had hauled me to this strange new world within the clouds. It was Gabby, the very same as I had seen him last. Youthful, sleeves rolled, still wearing his backpack.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.
‘Hiding. I’m not always wanting to be found. But when you took that leap, well, I wasn’t going to let you die.’
‘For the second time.’
‘Fourth, actually, but who’s counting?’
‘You are.’
‘Agreed. But you didn’t see me the other times. In my line of work, being seen can raise difficulties.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘No, few do – let me show you around.’
And so saying, he led the way up the creaking spiral bone staircase. We didn’t have to go very far before we broke cloud, and emerged into the sunlight. I looked around. My mouth, I think, may even have dropped open.
We were standing on what I can only describe as a floating platform of massive Leviathan bones, all lashed together, and constructed on several different levels. There were walkways, stairways and even rooms, passageways and a main hall, the framework of each built solely of lighter-than-air Leviathan bones.
‘The legendary Leviathans’ Graveyard,’ I breathed, for here indeed were the remains of perhaps hundreds of Leviathans, their bones used to make a hideout of crude beauty. Despite the lashed-bone construction there was elegance in the haphazard structure, and a certain recycled charm, for among the framework of bones was the booty of the aerial pirate – parts of aircraft stolen on the wing and adapted to make the hideout more like home. Wings became roofs, aluminium fuselage panels became footways, aero-engines as generator sets and winches. We were standing at what appeared to be a dock, ready to accept a Cloud Leviathan, with a large leather harness all set to strap a wicker balloonist’s gondola on the creature’s back, with harpoon guns on swivelling mounts, grappling hooks and cutlasses at the ready.
But for all this apparent readiness, the hideout was long abandoned. Everything was old, worn and weathered. Any exposed metal was corroded and the leather strips that held the Cloud Leviathans’ bones together had begun to rot. There were bodies, too, or rather, partial bodies. The closest pirate to us had died while fighting as his arm was still holding a cutlass embedded in the handrail, but although most of him was now little more than skeleton half held together with dried gristle, his arm, half of his chest and head had been preserved at the moment of death – but as a dull grey metal.
I tapped the grey metal, and stared uneasily at the look of grim determination stuck permanently to the dead pirate’s features, then tested the metal for softness with my fingernail. There was no mistake – he had been changed partially to lead.
‘The Eye of Zoltar,’ I breathed, ‘it’s here – or was here.’
I looked around to see whether there were other bodies, and there were, all of them either partially or completely changed to lead. It looked as though there had been a fight – and the pirates had lost.
‘However did this place come about?’ I asked as we followed the trail of dead pirates towards the main hall, the walkway flexing beneath our feet as we moved.
‘The Cambrian species of Leviathan has always lived on Cadair Idris,’ explained Gabby. ‘It is hatched here, breeds here, roosts here overnight and will eventually return here to die. Once dead, it floats in the air until it rots away, and its bones rise to form a mass about twenty thousand feet above the summit – and usefully become the nest where it lays its eggs. It’s thought the first sky pirate tamed a Leviathan and then established a base in what was once the Leviathan’s nest.’
‘We’re not at twenty thousand feet,’ I said, noting as we walked past how another pirate was lead from the waist down.
‘Agreed,’ said Gabby, ‘and it would be too cold to live up there. We think that much of this aircraft scrap – the engines and undercarriage and whatnot – is really just for ballast, to keep it hovering just above the mountain’s summit. One of their first acts of piracy was to kidnap a sorcerer to ensure that the nest – now built into pretty much what you see now – was permanently obscured by cloud.’
‘Which explains why the summit can never be seen.’
‘Precisely. As the years went by the pirating business moved from captain to captain but was always fairly low key – until Sky Pirate Bunty Wolff took over. She had no qualms about plundering the biggest airliners quite literally on the wing – she would attack anything if there was rich booty to be had.’
‘So was the attack on Cloud City Nimbus III and the loss of the Tyrannic her after all?’
‘Absolutely. She always made sure there were no witnesses.’
‘She sounds like a monster.’
We had arrived at the main hall. We stepped across another half-lead pirate holding a musket, and opened two doors that looked as if they too had been salvaged from an aircraft. The hall had been made up of an entire Cloud Leviathan ribcage covered with a patchwork of aircraft fabric, still with registration numbers and the names of almost every airline I could think of. It would have been used as a meeting place, for meals and grog and shanties – or whatever it is pirates sing.
‘Three out of four missing aircraft can be attributed to Sky Pirate Wolff,’ said Gabby as we walked across the creaking floorboards, some of which were missing, revealing the swirling clouds below, ‘and she did very well out it. Murderous thug, of course; nothing glamorous in pirates – they’re criminals, pure and simple.’
‘Have you heard of something called the Eye of Zoltar?’ I asked, as Gabby seemed to know a lot about a lot.
‘No, but I presume it’s related to Zoltar the sorcerer?’
‘A pink ruby about the size of a goose egg,’ I said, ‘which seems to dance with an inner fire. It can be used as a conduit – a concentrator of wizidrical energy. But it’s dangerous, too. In the wrong hands, it will??
?’
‘Turn a person partially to lead?’ asked Gabby as we passed yet another pirate who had suffered a similar fate to the rest.
‘Wholly, sometimes,’ I said, recalling Able Quizzler, who must have been entirely lead to have the energy to bury himself when he hit the ground.
‘Nasty way to go,’ said Gabby, ‘but in pirating, an unpleasant death is very much an occupational hazard. You seek this jewel?’
‘That we do,’ I said, ‘and all the clues point towards Sky Pirate Wolff.’
‘Then you’d better meet her,’ said Gabby, ‘she’s in here.’
Sky Pirate Bunty Wolff
Gabby opened an inner door from the main hall and we entered Sky Pirate Wolff’s private cabin. The room was panelled with an interior stolen from the first-class lounge of a flying boat somewhere and once must have looked supremely elegant – before the rain had managed to gain access, turning parts of the panelling black with mould.
Sky Pirate Bunty Wolff had been completely turned to lead. It was a similar effect to being transformed to stone. Every pore of her skin, every muscle sinew, scar, blemish and hair, was perfectly preserved. She was dressed in traditional pirate uniform, although with a battered flying helmet in place of the tricorne hat. Her clothes had rotted badly, and a pair of pistols were still stuck in her waistband. One of her lead hands was resting on the tabletop, and the other was empty and held aloft, the fingers open as though showing us an apple or something. Upon her features was a look of shocked surprise. Her enleadening moment had not been expected.
‘Is your Eye of Zoltar anywhere here?’ asked Gabby.
‘Certain to say it once was,’ I replied with a sigh, checking an open safe behind Sky Pirate Wolff that was stashed with jewels, sadly none the size of a goose’s egg, and nothing that was ‘dancing with inner fire’. The Eye, I knew, would be unmistakable.
‘Do you know when all this happened?’ I asked.
‘Six years ago,’ said Gabby, ‘give or take. We rarely intervene when it comes to pirates.’