Scepter of the Ancients

  She looked at it, resting there on the table at her elbow. Who would be calling? Anyone who knew Gordon had died wouldn’t be calling, because they’d know he had died, and she didn’t really want to be the one to tell anyone who didn’t know. It could be her parents—but then why didn’t they just call her mobile?

  Figuring that as the new owner of the house it was her responsibility to answer her own phone, Stephanie picked it up. “Hello?”

  Silence.

  “Hello?” Stephanie repeated.

  “Who is this?” came a man’s voice.

  “I’m sorry,” Stephanie said, “who are you looking for?”

  “Who is this?” responded the voice, more irritably this time.

  “If you’re looking for Gordon Edgley,” Stephanie said, “I’m afraid that he’s—”

  “I know Edgley’s dead,” snapped the man. “Who are you? Your name?”

  Stephanie hesitated. “Why do you want to know?” she asked.

  “What are you doing in that house? Why are you in his house?”

  “If you want to call back tomorrow—”

  “I don’t want to, all right? Listen to me, girlie: If you mess up my master’s plans, he will be very displeased, and he is not a man you want to displease—you got that? Now tell me who you are!”

  Stephanie realized her hands were shaking. She forced herself to calm down, and quickly found anger replacing her nervousness. “My name is none of your business,” she said. “If you want to talk to someone, call back tomorrow at a reasonable hour.”

  “You don’t talk to me like that,” the man hissed.

  “Good night,” Stephanie said firmly.

  “You do not talk to me like—”

  But Stephanie was already putting the phone down. Suddenly the idea of spending the whole night here wasn’t as appealing as it had first seemed. She considered calling her parents, then scolded herself for being so childish. No need to worry them, she thought; no need to worry them about something so—

  Someone pounded on the front door.

  “Open up!” came the man’s voice between the pounding. Stephanie got to her feet, staring through to the hall beyond the living room. She could see a dark shape behind the frosted glass around the front door. “Open the damn door!”

  Stephanie backed up to the fireplace, her heart pounding in her chest. He knew she was in here—there was no use pretending that she wasn’t—but maybe if she stayed really quiet, he’d give up and go away. She heard him cursing, and the pounding grew so heavy that the front door rattled under the blows.

  “Leave me alone!” Stephanie shouted.

  “Open the door!”

  “No!” she shouted back. She liked shouting; it disguised her fear. “I’m calling the police! I’m calling the police right now!”

  The pounding stopped immediately, and she saw the shape move away from the door. Was that it? Had she scared him away? She thought of the back door—was it locked? Of course it was locked—it had to be locked. But she wasn’t sure, she wasn’t certain. She grabbed a poker from the fireplace and was reaching for the phone when she heard a knock on the window beside her.

  She cried out and jumped back. The curtains were open, and outside the window was pitch-black. She couldn’t see a thing.

  “Are you alone in there?” came the voice. It was teasing now, playing with her.

  “Go away,” she said loudly, holding up the poker so that he could see it. She heard the man laugh.

  “What are you going to do with that?” he asked from outside.

  “I’ll break your head open with it!” Stephanie screamed at him, fear and fury bubbling inside her. She heard him laugh again.

  “I just want to come in,” he said. “Open the door for me, girlie. Let me come in.”

  “The police are on their way,” she said.

  “You’re a liar.”

  Still she could see nothing beyond the glass, and he could see everything. She snatched the phone from its cradle.

  “Don’t do that,” came the voice.

  “I’m calling the police.”

  “The road’s closed, girlie. You call them, I’ll break down that door and kill you hours before they get here.”

  Fear became terror and Stephanie froze. She was going to cry. She could feel the tears welling up inside her. She hadn’t cried in years. “What do you want?” she said to the darkness. “Why do you want to come in?”

  “It’s got nothing to do with me, girlie. I’ve just been sent to pick something up. Let me in; I’ll look around, get what I came here for, and leave. I won’t harm a pretty little hair on your pretty little head, I promise. Now you just open that door right this second.”

  Stephanie gripped the poker in both hands and shook her head. She was crying now, tears rolling down her cheeks. “No,” she said.

  She screamed as a fist smashed through the window, showering the carpet with glass. She stumbled back as the man started climbing in, glaring at her with blazing eyes, unmindful of the glass that cut into him. The moment his foot touched the floor inside the house, Stephanie bolted out of the room and over to the front door, fumbling at the lock.

  Strong hands grabbed her from behind. She screamed again as she was lifted off her feet and carried back. She kicked out, slamming a heel into his shin. The man grunted and let go. Stephanie twisted, trying to swing the poker into his face, but he caught it and pulled it from her grasp. One hand went to her throat, and Stephanie gagged, unable to breathe as the man forced her back into the living room.

  He pushed her into an armchair and leaned in on her. No matter how hard she tried, she could not break his grip.

  “Now then,” the man said, his mouth contorting into a sneer, “why don’t you just give me the key, little girlie?”

  And that’s when the front door was flung off its hinges and Skulduggery Pleasant burst into the house.

  The man cursed and released Stephanie and swung the poker, but Skulduggery moved straight to him and hit him so hard, Stephanie thought the man’s head might come off. He hit the ground and tumbled backward, but rolled to his feet as Skulduggery moved in again.

  The man launched himself forward. The two men collided and went backward over the couch, and Skulduggery lost his hat. Stephanie saw a flash of white above the scarf.

  They got to their feet, grappling, and the man swung a punch that knocked Skulduggery’s sunglasses to the other side of the room. Skulduggery responded by moving in low, grabbing the man around the waist, and twisting his hip into him. The man was flipped to the floor, hard.

  He cursed a little more while he was down there, then remembered Stephanie and made for her. Stephanie leaped out of the chair, but before he reached her, Skulduggery was there, kicking the man’s legs out from under him. The man hit a small coffee table with his chin and howled in pain.

  “You think you can stop me?” he screamed as he tried to stand. His knees seemed shaky. “Do you know who I am?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest,” Skulduggery said.

  The man spat blood and grinned defiantly. “Well, I know about you,” he said. “My master told me all about you, Detective, and you’re going to have to do a lot more than that to stop me.”

  Skulduggery shrugged, and Stephanie watched in amazement as a ball of fire flared up in his hand. He hurled it, and the man was suddenly covered in flame. But instead of screaming, the man tilted his head back and roared with laughter. The fire might have engulfed him, but it wasn’t burning him.

  “More!” He laughed. “Give me more!”

  “If you insist.”

  And then Skulduggery took an old-fashioned revolver from his jacket and fired, the gun bucking slightly with the recoil. The bullet hit the man in the shoulder and he screamed, then tried to run and tripped. He scrambled for the doorway, ducking and dodging lest he get shot again, the flames obstructing his vision so much that he hit a wall on his way out.

  And then he was gone.

  Stephan
ie stared at the door, trying to make sense of the impossible.

  “Well,” Skulduggery said from behind her, “that’s something you don’t see every day.”

  She turned. When his hat had come off, his hair had come off too. In the confusion, all she had seen was a chalk-white scalp, so she turned expecting to see a bald albino, maybe. But no. With his sunglasses gone and his scarf hanging down, there was no denying the fact that he had no flesh, he had no skin, he had no eyes, and he had no face.

  All he had was a skull for a head.

  Four

  THE SECRET WAR

  SKULDUGGERY PUT HIS gun away and walked out to the hall. He peered out into the night. Satisfied that there were no human fireballs lurking anywhere nearby, he came back inside and picked the door up off the floor, grunting with the effort. He maneuvered it back to where it belonged, leaving it leaning in the doorway; then he shrugged and came back into the living room, where Stephanie was still standing and staring at him.

  “Sorry about the door,” he said.

  Stephanie stared.

  “I’ll pay to get it fixed.”

  Stephanie stared.

  “It’s still a good door, you know. Sturdy.”

  When he realized that Stephanie was in no condition to do anything but stare, he shrugged again and took off his coat, folded it neatly, and draped it over the back of a chair. He went to the broken window and started picking up the shards of glass.

  Now that he didn’t have his coat on, Stephanie could truly appreciate how thin he really was. His suit, well tailored though it was, hung off him, giving it a shapeless quality. She watched him collect the broken glass, and saw a flash of bone between his shirtsleeve and glove. He stood up, looking back at her.

  “Where should I put all this glass?”

  “I don’t know,” Stephanie said in a quiet voice. “You’re a skeleton.”

  “I am indeed,” he said. “Gordon used to keep a trash can out at the back door; shall I put it in that?”

  Stephanie nodded. “Yes, okay,” she said simply, and watched Skulduggery carry the armful of glass shards out of the room. All her life she had longed for something else, for something to take her out of the humdrum world she knew—and now that it looked like it might actually happen, she didn’t have one clue what to do. Questions were tripping over themselves in her head, each one vying to be the one that was asked first. So many of them.

  Skulduggery came back in, and she asked the first question. “Did you find it all right?”

  “I did, yes. It was where he always kept it.”

  “Okay then.” If questions were people, she thought, they’d all be staring at her now in disbelief. She struggled to form coherent thoughts.

  “Did you tell him your name?” Skulduggery was asking.

  “What?”

  “Your name. Did you tell him?”

  “Uh, no …”

  “Good. You know something’s true name, you have power over it. But even a given name, even Stephanie, would have been enough to do it.”

  “To do what?”

  “To give him some influence over you, to get you to do what he asked. If he had your name and he knew what to do with it, sometimes that’s all it takes. That’s a scary thought, now, isn’t it?”

  “What’s going on?” Stephanie asked. “Who was he? What did he want? Just who are you?”

  “I’m me,” Skulduggery said, picking up his hat and wig and placing them on a nearby table. “As for him, I don’t know who he is; never seen him before in my life.”

  “You shot him.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you threw fire at him.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  Stephanie’s legs felt weak and her head felt light.

  “Mr. Pleasant, you’re a skeleton.”

  “Ah yes, back to the crux of the thing. Yes. I am, as you say, a skeleton. I have been one for a few years now.”

  “Am I going mad?”

  “I hope not.”

  “So you’re real? You actually exist?”

  “Presumably.”

  “You mean you’re not sure if you exist or not?”

  “I’m fairly certain. I mean, I could be wrong. I could be some ghastly hallucination, a figment of my imagination.”

  “You might be a figment of your own imagination?”

  “Stranger things have happened. And do, with alarming regularity.”

  “This is too weird.”

  He put his gloved hands in his pockets and cocked his head. He had no eyeballs, so it was hard to tell if he was looking at her or not. “You know, I met your uncle under similar circumstances. Well, kind of similar. But he was drunk. And we were in a bar. And he had vomited on my shoes. So I suppose the actual circumstances aren’t overly similar, but both events include a meeting, so … My point is, he was having some trouble and I was there to lend a hand, and we became good friends after that. Good, good friends.” His head tilted. “You look like you might faint.”

  Stephanie nodded slowly. “I’ve never fainted before, but I think you might be right.”

  “Do you want me to catch you if you fall, or … ?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  “No problem at all.”

  “Thank you.”

  Stephanie gave him a weak smile, and then darkness clouded her vision and she felt herself falling and the last thing she saw was Skulduggery Pleasant darting across the room toward her.

  * * *

  Stephanie awoke on the couch with a blanket over her. The room was dark, lit by only two lamps in opposite corners. She looked over at the broken window, saw that it was now boarded up. She heard a hammering from the hall, and when she felt strong enough to stand, she slowly rose and walked out of the living room.

  Skulduggery Pleasant was trying to hang the door back on its hinges. He had his shirtsleeve rolled up on his left forearm. Ulna, she corrected herself, proving that her first year of biology class had not gone to waste. Or was it radius? Or both? She heard him mutter; then he noticed her and nodded brightly.

  “Ah, you’re up.”

  “You fixed the window.”

  “Well, covered it up. Gordon had a few pieces of timber out back, so I did what I could. Not having the same luck with the door, though. I find it much easier to blast them off than put them back. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  “A cup of hot tea, that’s what you need. Lots of sugar.”

  He abandoned the door and guided her to the kitchen, and she sat at the table while he boiled the water.

  “Hungry?” he asked when it had boiled, but she shook her head. “Milk?”

  She nodded. He added milk and spoonfuls of sugar, gave the tea a quick stir, and put the cup on the table in front of her. She took a sip—it was hot, but nice.

  “Thank you,” she said, and he gave a little shrug. It was hard discerning some of his meanings without a face to go by, but she took the shrug to mean “Think nothing of it.”

  “Was that magic? With the fire, and blasting the door?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  She peered closer. “How can you talk?”

  “Sorry?”

  “How can you talk? You move your mouth when you speak, but you’ve got no tongue, you’ve got no lips, you’ve got no vocal cords. I mean, I know what skeletons look like—I’ve seen diagrams and models and stuff—and the only things that hold them together are flesh and skin and ligaments, so why don’t you just fall apart?”

  He gave another shrug, both shoulders this time. “Well, that’s magic too.”

  She looked at him. “Magic’s pretty handy.”

  “Yes, magic is.”

  “And what about, you know, nerve endings? Can you feel pain?”

  “I can, but that’s not a bad thing. Pain lets you know that you’re alive, after all.”

  “And are you alive?”

  “Well, technically no, but …”

  She
peered into his empty eye sockets. “Do you have a brain?”

  He laughed. “I don’t have a brain, I don’t have any organs, but I have a consciousness.” He started clearing away the sugar and the milk. “To be honest with you, it’s not even my head.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not. They ran away with my skull. I won this one in a poker game.”

  “That’s not even yours? How does it feel?”

  “It’ll do. It’ll do until I finally get around to getting my own head back. You look faintly disgusted.”

  “I just … Doesn’t it feel weird? It’d be like wearing someone else’s socks.”

  “You get used to it.”

  “What happened to you?” she asked. “Were you born like this?”

  “No, I was born perfectly normal. Skin, internal organs, the whole shebang. Even had a face that wasn’t too bad to look at, if I do say so myself.”

  “So what happened?”

  Skulduggery leaned against the counter, arms folded across his chest. “I got into magic. Back then—back when I was, for want of a better term, alive—there were some pretty nasty people around. The world was seeing a darkness it might never have recovered from. It was war, you see. A secret war, but war nonetheless. There was a sorcerer, Mevolent, worse than any of the others, and he had himself an army, and those of us who refused to fall in behind him found ourselves standing up against him.

  “And we were winning. Eventually, after years of fighting this little war of ours, we were actually winning. His support was crumbling, his influence was fading, and he was staring defeat in the face. So he ordered one last, desperate strike, against all the leaders on our side.”

  Stephanie stared at him, lost in his voice.

  “I went up against his right-hand man, who had laid out a wickedly exquisite trap. I didn’t suspect a thing until it was too late.

  “So I died. He killed me. The twenty-third of October, it was, when my heart stopped beating. Once I was dead, they stuck my body up on a pike and burned it for all to see. They used me as a warning; they used the bodies of all the leaders they had killed as warnings, and to my utter horror, it worked.”