The boys stumbled out into a marketplace, and immediately merchants sprang up, carrying baskets and crates to and fro, shouting the names of their wares.
Brian pointed breathlessly to the statue of the Viking emperor. Gregory nodded vigorously, and they darted off to the right, toward Snarth’s Cavern.
Jack Stimple looked about once again, confused by the glow of the tradespeople and their stalls, then set off after the boys. Lovers relaxed in sidewalk cafés; everywhere people were talking earnestly and laughing. Women were out with parasols. Acrobats rolled and jumped in the streets, tossing striped balls back and forth.
Brian felt another metal disc swipe past him. Jack Stimple was gaining.
Steel rang on stone as a disc skidded along the road, raising sparks.
Brian screamed.
Another shot through the air.
And Gregory saw it slice through the back of Brian’s head.
An instant later, five hundred years earlier, Brian and Gregory stumbled and tried to get their bearings. Brian had pushed the buttons and thrown them into the past just before the disk had hit.
Norumbegans dressed in Renaissance robes and Victorian morning coats surveyed the boys with distaste. Gregory and Brian pulled themselves up and raced down the street, the City of Gargoyles alive and at its prime all around them.
“Did Jack get through?” shouted Gregory.
Brian glanced back over his shoulder. “No. Just us.”
“Then we’re safe?”
“No! He can’t touch us, but he may be able to see us! We probably look like ghosts to him—and we can’t see him. When we switch back, he’ll be waiting!”
Carriages clattered around the street. High above, the boys realized, a subterranean sun shone down on the dark stone of the houses. Pointy-eared Norumbegans with their mechanical servants filled the streets, tipping their top hats and skullcaps to acquaintances, stopping to peer at the wares of merchants. Gregory and Brian dodged through a maze of fruit stands, scrambling to avoid startled customers.
The end of the street was in sight—the wall of the vast cavern stretched upward, broken by the jagged entrance to Snarth’s lair.
They ran up the steps. Snarth’s Cavern, though dim, was lit with countless paper lanterns; it was a park, where wide bushes and trees grew out of cracks in the boulders. People strolled through the twilit garden along wide paths.
As Gregory and Brian reached the archway that looked out on the Taskwith Canal and the Steps of Doom, the paper lanterns began to fade. The shrubs melted. A stand of rhododendrons was unfavorably replaced by a sprinting Jack Stimple.
Snarth growled and reared to his feet, brute arms swinging.
Jack pointed one hand at him, and a blast of fire shot across the cavern. Snarth yelped.
The boys didn’t stay to see the outcome. They could hear shouting behind them, roaring, thumping. They ran down the steps.
They leaped into the boat—it bobbed and bucked wildly, and water shot over the edge. Gregory yanked the clips out of their staples, placing his foot firmly on the shore, and shoved the boat into the stream.
Jack was running down the Steps of Doom.
Brian slammed down the starting lever, and the boat sputtered into action.
A metal disc stuck into the rim of the boat with a thud. Brian jumped and yelped. Jack was getting ready to throw another.
Brian held up the time teleporter. He pressed the buttons once again. It clicked.
Brian and Gregory dropped into the frigid waters of the canal, their boat gone. Gregory struggled out of his backpack, his eyes squeezed shut and his cheeks bulging with air. The water was so cold, he almost drew breath and sucked in water.
Brian struggled helplessly, flinging his arms out and gasping whenever his head broke through to the air. He could not tell what was air and what was water. He felt something shoot down his windpipe and gargle and choke in his lungs, and he screeched for breath.
A gondolier was lifting them from the water and carefully setting them down on the floor of the boat. Lanterns lit the wide canal, illuminating the way for various small vessels that were slim and high-prowed like the city’s gables.
“Upstream,” gasped Brian.
The gondolier did not understand English. Brian pointed frantically. Gregory added, “Please, very quickly. But not too quickly.”
“?” said the man in his language.
“We want to stay near our boat.”
“?”
“Our invisible boat! Oh. I guess never mind.”
The gondolier looked mystified, but then shrugged, nodded, and began to row his gilded craft along toward Lake Gwarnmore.
“Sit up,” Gregory ordered. Brian did so, looking considerably frazzled. His dark hair hung in thick strands over his eyes. Gregory crouched, and worked at pulling off Brian’s pack. “Now you’ll be able to swim better. Anything you need in there?”
“It’s all wet,” said Brian, puffing for breath.
The time-switch struck. They plunged back into the water. Gregory started yelling profanity. When they resurfaced, feeling the cold storm through their limbs again, they found that the canal was only lit by the warm glow of their lantern, which stood in the boat. They began swimming toward the boat, Gregory dragging the pack behind him. Gregory threw the pack over the gunwale and pulled himself kicking into the boat. He reached out and took his friend’s hand, and with a heave, Brian tumbled in as well. They were both convulsing with shivers, their tweed clothes sopping, their collars sticky with wet starch, their ties plastered over their shoulders.
The boat puttered on toward Lake Gwarnmore, and the emperor’s barges.
They saw several visions as they crossed the lake: three-masted yachts, heavy with ornate nautical carving and webs of rope; square-rigged merchant ships, prowed with wood mermen; smaller skiffs; and even cruder, medieval-looking ships that seemed half-fortress. But the glowing rigging, the phantom mermaid figureheads soon faded silently, leaving the water dark and forbidding.
When they saw the barges with the dancers and the young emperor, Brian held the time teleporter at the ready.
“I really don’t want to go into this water again,” said Gregory.
“On the count of three,” said Brian.
“Oh, sweet mercy,” said Gregory.
“Ready?”
“They’re all dancing.”
“One.”
“This is going to be embarrassing.”
“Two.”
“We’re going to be really wet.”
“Three.”
They were in the water. The sky was lit with the subterranean sun. The orchestra played “Farewell, Fair Broceliande.” Brian rammed into a synchronized swimmer. Gregory was heaving himself up onto the deck of the emperor’s pleasure barge.
There was a whispering among the crowds on the barges. The orchestra played on. The dancers had stopped; Brian was standing among them. He looked awful, shivering, his soaked knickerbockers sluicing water that puddled around the dancers’ silken tights.
The emperor called something to the orchestra conductor, and others repeated it. The music stopped. The courtiers were laughing.
The emperor asked Gregory a question. Gregory said, “I’m sorry to burst in like this? But we need your crown.”
The emperor exchanged a look with a woman sitting at his side, who wore her hair wound in thick braids.
“The crown of the realm,” the emperor of Norumbega said in English. “You would like to borrow it.”
“That’s right,” said Gregory. “Your world is in danger. We’re trying to save it.”
Brian staggered forward, his teeth clacking. “We’ve come from the future,” he said. “You must beware the Thusser Hordes.”
“Hmm,” said the woman. “Must we really?”
“Yes,” said Gregory.
“Sirs,” called the emperor to two Thussers who sat on gilded chairs, dressed in sashes. “Must we beware you?”
“Your H
ighness,” said one, “you have nothing to fear. Continue with the dancing. There’s nothing one likes so much as a rigadoon.”
“Quite,” said the emperor. “Hey—sirrah—soaked brat number one—explain: How exactly will borrowing my crown save the world?”
“We need to place it on a statue,” said Gregory. “In the future.”
“Yes. Of course.” The emperor exchanged glances with the woman, and then with the archbishop, and then said, “Do I look like I have a hole in my head?”
Brian said, “It’s absolutely necessary. You’re going to flee into another world, and it’s going to be up to us to keep your kingdom out of the control of the Thusser.”
“I see. That doesn’t sound likely.”
“Please,” said Brian. “We only have another few seconds here.”
The woman leaned her elbows on her knees. “Oh, just give them the crown. I want to finish the dancing so we can get on to the s’mores.”
“Swell,” said the emperor. “S’mores.”
“Your Highness,” said the archbishop, “I cannot help but notice that—”
As he spoke, Gregory sloshed up to the Emperor of Norumbega, bowed, and yanked the coronet off his head.
“Pardon?” said the emperor.
“Sorry!” cried Gregory. “For your own good! Not much time!”
Windup guards ran toward him with pointed glaives. He grasped the coronet above his head with one hand and held his nose with the other. He drew in a big breath.
Brian braced himself for the switch back into the present.
The guards came to Gregory’s side. They stood around him.
Everyone stared at one another.
Gregory let out his breath.
The archbishop cleared his throat.
“Ah,” said the emperor. “Still here. This is a little awkward, isn’t it?”
“Er,” said Gregory, “say, whose cat is that?”
He pointed and fell through time, into the dark water.
The boys lay on the boat, exhausted and freezing. It was puttering toward the Dark Marina.
“We don’t want to go back there,” said Brian. “We have to get back to the cathedral.”
“How?” said Gregory. “This stupid thing will just take us right back to the Steps of Doom, where Jack Stimple will be waiting for us.”
Brian sat up. He reached over and shut the engine off.
The boat rocked in the stillness. “Not,” he said, “if we just paddle to the shore.”
“Our lanterns are wet.”
“We can see by the light of the ghosts.”
So they began the slow process of paddling with their hands and the game board.
Ships burnt into being around them and glowed for a few minutes, then faded away. The boys’ hands were numb. They shivered as they rowed.
Eventually, they reached the docks. They clipped the boat to the moorings.
As they walked up through the streets, a later phase of history showed itself. Thusser warriors stalked past them, dressed in masks like crows’ heads with glass windows for eyes; they held guns that looked like old-fashioned blunderbusses. Out of the wide nozzles poured bursts of gas.
On the hill up to the castle and cathedral, the last of the Norumbegans wandered with carts filled with antique chairs, with birdcages and babies and sacks of macaroni. They looked back over their beloved city. They were going into exile.
Then they flickered and were gone. The murmur of their voices remained for a while.
Brian and Gregory took a long time working their way up the avenue. They had to feel their way forward between ghosts. They swung their hands in front of them. Gregory carried Brian’s wet pack. Brian carried the coronet and the time box in his pockets.
“I am sick,” said Gregory in the darkness, “of wet tweed. I feel like I’ve spent the last week in wet tweed.”
Brian wasn’t feeling strong enough to talk.
They reached the square where the cathedral stood. Cautiously, they approached the building. They peered about within, watching green monks shuttle quietly through the apse.
“This is it,” said Gregory. “On to victory.”
They stepped inside.
Torches flared all around them.
Gregory said, “Here goes.”
They walked toward the statue of the faceless king. Yellow light slid and shuddered across the marble.
“Almost there,” said Gregory. He held up the coronet.
“Who lit the torches?” said Brian.
“I did,” said Jack.
Gregory swore.
The two boys sprinted toward the front of the cathedral, where the statue stood. Jack appeared from behind a pillar. He ran to intercept them.
It was like a nightmare. There was no way to outrun him. He stood between the boys and the finish. Brian had the coronet clutched in his hand. His knuckles were white, his fingers red with the cold.
Jack came for him. Brian backed up. Jack lumbered onward—Brian screamed—Jack tackled him—and Brian threw the coronet away—toward Gregory—
With a thud, Brian hit the ground, his head slamming into the stone. Jack had his elbow in Brian’s gut, his hands on Brian’s throat.
Gregory scrambled to get the coronet from the floor.
“Now,” whispered Jack to Brian, “death.”
Gregory stood, the coronet in his hands, the statue to his left—and to his right, Jack Stimple killing his friend by shoving his thumbs into Brian’s throat.
Gregory hesitated. “Hey!” he yelled. “Over here!” He started to run toward the statue.
Brian watched him. “He’s going to win,” he croaked triumphantly to Jack. “He’s going to—win!”
“Yes,” said Jack, pleased. “So he is.”
“Gregory!” Brian gasped. The sneering face was inches from his own. “He’s almost there,” wheezed Brian. “He’s—”
“I know,” said Jack Stimple. “Exactly.”
Suddenly, Brian realized what was going on.
“No!” he screamed. “Gregory! Don’t! Don’t put it on there!”
Gregory wasn’t listening. He was climbing the statue, pulling off the plaster crown and throwing it to the ground. In his other hand was the golden circlet.
“Don’t!” screamed Brian.
“What?” said Gregory.
“Don—” said Brian—but he had pressed the button, and now both he and Jack Stimple had shot into the past and were ghosts to Gregory, their voices muffled, Stimple clutching Brian’s neck, his hands moving to slam the boy’s gagging head again and again against the stone floor.
Brian saw the torchlit world flung around him, felt the shock of his head banging the paving stones, felt the thumbs that slowly pressed into his throat, and he screamed. “Help!” he shouted. “Help!”
Monks came racing toward them, sandals slapping on the stone.
Jack lifted a hand and knocked a priest backward. He snarled and turned back to Brian.
“You’re not our opponent, are you?” said Brian.
Jack didn’t answer. He raised a fist.
Suddenly, strong hands were on his shoulders, hauling him off the boy, yanking him to his feet and holding him back.
“Take him away!” gasped Brian. “Quickly! Out of the building! Take him out!”
The monks looked around, bewildered.
“He needs to be as far away as possible when we both…for when we both come back from…Take him away, please! Please!”
The monks dragged Jack Stimple toward the exit.
Brian stood. Others were watching him warily. Brocade cloths were on the altar. People were singing a mass. The statue of the faceless king was nowhere to be seen—it would not be carved for centuries.
Jack’s shrieks were outside the sanctuary, now. Brian moved up toward where the statue of the king would be.
“Gregory,” said Brian, “if you can hear me—whatever you do, don’t put the crown on the statue. We made a terrible mistake! Can
you hear me? Gregory?”
He waited. A monk padded up the length of the cathedral to question him. He watched the monk approach, and then suddenly fade. The cathedral was dark, cold, and empty. Feeble torches flared in the wall sconces.
“What do you mean?” demanded Gregory. He was poised to put the crown on the faceless king. “What do you mean?”
“Give it to me,” said Brian. He ran to Gregory’s side and pulled himself up on the base of the statue. “Give it to me now.”
Jack Stimple’s footsteps could be heard racing from the back of the cathedral.
“What’s gotten into you?” said Gregory, holding the crown away from his friend. “What is it?”
“I’ll explain later—just give it!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Give it! Trust me! Not much time!”
Gregory looked in his friend’s eyes. Brian was pale, and breathing almost in sobs.
Gregory said, “Brian. I trust you.”
He held out the crown.
Brian took it and jammed the crown on the king’s head. “Jack Stimple wasn’t our opponent,” he said. “You and I were playing against each other. You were the player for the Thusser Hordes.”
They looked down, and saw that there was a block of stone at the foot of the statue. It said, FINISH.
It had not been there seconds before.
Brian flung himself down on the slab. He jumped up and down. He kicked the edge of it frantically. Clattering footsteps approached through the void of the cathedral.
A voice said, “It has been decided. Victory is with the People of the Mound of Norumbega.”
But Jack Stimple still came on.
His footsteps slowed.
He stood before them. His eyes were downcast. His coat was torn. He had blood coming out of his mouth.
“So there it is,” he whispered. “You’ve won.” He looked at the slab beneath Brian’s feet and repeated, “You’ve won.” He walked right up to them. They shied away.
He dropped to his knees, and bent down to place his lips softly against the cool marble. He rested his forehead against the slab, his eyes closed.
He whispered, “I will not be forgiven for your victory, Mr. Thatz.” He looked up, menacingly. “And now there is no one to protect you. No Game. No rules.”