Ratastrophe Catastrophe Read online

  Diek regained his composure with a measured breath. Then he spread out his hands and a short spear materialized between them. Snatching it out of the air, Diek reached back and flung it straight at Groan, who swung out wildly with his broadsword and split the thing clean in half.

  Again, Diek! Again! Give him no time to rest!

  Diek acted instantaneously, driving his palm outward and producing a bolt of energy that sent Groan hurtling toward the back of the cavern. But the big barbarian was soon on his feet again, and making a determined sprint back to the center of the cavern.

  Forget him, for now. Concentrate on the children.

  Diek looked down at his wandering audience.

  Don’t let them leave, boy. Focus your mind, control them.

  Diek closed his eyes and turned his palms outward. A few rogue vapors swam away on the wind, but then there was nothing. The children were no longer responding to his thoughts. He reached for the flute.

  Forget that foolish toy, Diek. It’s nothing; you don’t need it. Watch now, see what you can do on your own….

  Diek gasped, and a blue mist emanated from his throat. Curling on the air, it snaked its way down toward the children and began to snare them with its tendrils, strapping arms to sides and binding feet together. Unfortunately, the strands were weak and did nothing more than hinder the children as they fought to escape.

  No, no, no! If you can’t manage such a simple task, then what use are you?

  Diek clawed at his head, as if doing so would remove The Voice. It didn’t work: if anything, the demonic tone became stronger.

  What do you think you are doing? At least deal with the intruders!

  Diek bit down on his lip so hard that it began to bleed. Then he cracked his knuckles, took a deep breath, and pointed his hands downward. A series of jagged blue streaks erupted from his fingertips and plunged into the cavern floor.

  For a moment, nothing happened.

  Then the ground started to shake.

  Very well, Diek. Now you will see what we once were. Oh yes, we shall raise our ancient hosts to assist you….

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  DUKE MODESET STOOD ATOP the tallest tower of his palace, surveying the rebellion below through an elegant telescopic device he’d found in the war room.

  His manservant stood a little way behind him, looking uncomfortable. “Sorry to keep on, milord, but why am I standing on this trapdoor, again?”

  The duke sighed.

  “I’ve told you, Pegrand, in order to keep our most energetic citizens from running me through with a blade.”

  “But, I’ve locked it, milord, and I’ve jammed a crowbar through the handle.”

  “Yes, well, I’m not taking any chances. Now just stand still, will you?”

  “Er…right, milord. Whatever you say.”

  Modeset returned his attention to the telescope, then collapsed it and put it away.

  “We’re in big trouble this time, old friend. You do realize that, even if the children miraculously come hurtling through the gates in the next five minutes, my days in this city are numbered.”

  “Oh, no, milord. Surely if—”

  Modeset waved his manservant’s protestations away.

  “We have to face facts, Pegrand. Even if the parents forgive me, the Yowlers won’t give up an opportunity to step in. They’ve wanted my blasted cousin for the throne ever since he was born. If I don’t get murdered, at the very least I’ll be sent into exile. Perhaps it might be best for all concerned if I just jump.”

  Modeset climbed up onto the nearest buttress and stretched out his arms like a man imitating a bird.

  “B-b-but you can’t—”

  A sword blade suddenly shot up through the trapdoor, narrowly missing the manservant’s privates.

  “Um, right you are, milord,” he gasped. “Don’t hang about, now.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE CAVERN WAS A HIVE of frantic activity. Children scrambled left and right, dodging and swerving to avoid the walking cadavers Diek had enticed from the cracked earth in an attempt to stop them leaving.

  “Down! Down! Do-o-own!”

  Gordo flew over the heads of the nearest children as if he’d been fired from a cannon, barreling into the undead mass with his battle-axe a blur. Skulls shattered and half-rotted limbs flew left and right, but the dwarf wasn’t having things all his own way. An evil-looking gash had been opened on his forehead and several of the staggering grave walkers were clawing mindlessly at his back. With every triumphant blow, he darted frantic glances left and right, but Groan was nowhere to be seen.

  Kill the sorcerer, boy. Destroy him.

  Diek—his own mind long gone—made to focus his gaze on Tambor. This time, a plume of yellow fire flew from his hands and surged toward the sorcerer. It hit the rocky ledge beneath him, which in turn came away from the wall and crashed to the ground.

  Diek smiled with satisfaction, and tried again. He sent a furious bolt of energy flying across the cavern, encased the old man and spun him around in midair, increasing in velocity until Tambor was nothing more than a blur. The spell intensified and the air began to hum. One more effort and….Diek toppled backward, his concentration broken. The spell weakened as the sorcerer’s attention was diverted to his own safety.

  The boulder had moved. Diek peered over his shoulder, and saw the barbarian grinning up at him.

  Groan was underneath the boy’s temporary stage, employing his considerable strength to tip it over. He gave one final grunt of effort, and Diek fell. The spell withered and died.

  Tambor plummeted downward. He still had enough awareness to roll as he hit the ground, but his own momentum took him over the edge of the promontory. His legs scrabbled for purchase on the rock face and he hung there, dangling precariously in midair.

  Thanks to some lucky hacks and a small group of enthusiastic, rock-pelting teenagers, Gordo was winning his battle with the undead. Cutting down the last hideous corpse in his path, he paused to catch his breath before rounding up the remaining innocents. Not that there were many; the children had evidently decided pretty quickly that they didn’t like the place they’d woken up in, and most of them had already begun to follow Jimmy toward the exit tunnel.

  It was just as well; things were about to get a lot worse.

  Tambor had managed to scrabble back onto his ledge. He got shakily to his feet and patted the dust from his robe. I’m too old for this, he thought, as he lowered himself down onto one creaky knee and began to recite another spell.

  “Come on, you stragglers! Get through the tunnel!”

  Gordo sighed; being three foot nothing didn’t prepare you well for ordering children to follow you.

  Farther along, Jimmy was having his own trouble maintaining order. He’d realized early on that the easiest way to control the situation would be to occasionally grab one kid, issue an instruction, and hope for the best. He reached out and grasped a jerkin.

  “Hurry along,” he snapped. “There’s a terrible, er, five-headed troll coming!”

  He looked down. A little girl with pigtails was trembling.

  Calm down.

  Diek was trying to dislodge The Voice from his skull. He clapped his hands over his ears and screamed.

  Calm down!

  He dropped to the ground, eyes suddenly devoid of soul.

  Now, focus on the rock.

  Groan wondered if the foreigner was lying behind the boulder, unconscious. He hoped he was. With an almighty effort, he put tremendous pressure on the rock and moved it forward a few feet. Then he let go, leaped back, and grimaced. The boulder was rolling toward him again, fast. He turned and ran.

  Jimmy was having a hard time. He’d finally managed to assure the little girl with the pigtails that, no, there wasn’t a terrible five-headed troll coming, but that they did still need to hurry. He’d carried her to the head of the line but had to put her down again because, surprisingly for a little thing with not an ounce of fat on her, she’d weighed a t
on.

  “Quiet down!” he boomed. A few sniggers broke out about twenty heads down the line.

  “Mummy says you shouldn’t shout at children,” said the little girl.

  Jimmy raised one eyebrow. “Mummy’s not trapped inside a mountain,” he said, then stopped abruptly. He’d expected a few surprises, coming out of a mountain with thousands of children. A portcullis hadn’t been one of them.

  It ran from wall to wall and blocked the path from floor to ceiling. He felt around for a lever but couldn’t find one. He turned back to the girl.

  “Does Mummy have anything to say on the subject of subterranean portcullises?” he asked.

  “Dunno,” said the girl. She sniffed. “Don’t fink she’s interested in that.”

  No, thought Jimmy, I bet she isn’t. “Right,” he said. “Stand back. I’m going to lift it.”

  He reached down and took hold of two squares in the iron lattice. Then he pulled with all his might. Nothing happened. A few small boys hurried up to help, but there was just no moving the thing.

  Jimmy sighed. “Okay everyone,” he started. “We’ll have to go back….”

  “We will not.”

  Gordo appeared from behind the knees of a gangly teenager, and nudged his way up to the group at the portcullis. “Let’s move this thing, shall we?” he said.

  The dwarf clasped his gnarled hands around the squares of the grid, and began to haul with all his might. Again, a few eager teens lent some dubious assistance. At last, there was a slow and dreary creak. Then the portcullis began to grind upward. A small boy near the front cheered and clapped his hands. He was soon joined by others. Gordo didn’t know why but, somehow, this made him feel about three inches taller.

  “There’s not much space,” he breathed. “You, the girl with the pigtails, go through and see if there’s a button you can push to lock this thing in place once we’ve raised it.”

  Despite Jimmy’s protests, the little girl stepped forward. Then she hesitated.

  “Mummy says—”

  “I don’t care. Just get through and do it!” Jimmy shouted.

  The girl crouched down and crawled through the gap.

  A few seconds later there followed a sharp click. It echoed off through the tunnel. Gordo breathed a sigh of relief and let go. The portcullis slid down again.

  The rock had caught up with Groan Teethgrit and wedged the barbarian into a corner. He heaved his body at it, but the magical force driving it on was simply too powerful.

  Tambor was halfway through his chant when he first consciously realized the power of the spell he was about to perform. This was no mere conjuration, this was the Doorway of Death. Once you’d cast it, there was definitely no going back. He didn’t even know what was likely to happen, only that it might involve his…paying a price. Back in his days at the Elistalis, he’d heard plenty of the older pupils talking about it, and most of the fragmentary conversations he’d caught were worrying. Some said that a terrible creature arrived to claim the victim, while others warned that even the act of invoking the spell drained the life from the caster. Tambor gulped; that was a possibility he was just going to have to entertain. He began to invoke the last line of the chant.

  On reflection, it hadn’t been a bad old life really, full of exciting quests and astounding magical discoveries in the early days, full of…er…paperwork afterward. He came to the end of the spell, stopped, and felt the magic surge through him.

  He pointed a finger at Diek Wustapha and prayed.

  The spell took effect almost immediately.

  There was a thunderclap, which resonated deep inside the base of the cavern, and a seam tore in the fabric of reality. Tambor gasped; he’d misjudged his positioning, and the portal hovered a short distance behind the foreigner, who was facing away from it, oblivious.

  Maybe, thought Tambor, he’ll just step back and stumble straight into it. He smiled wanly; it was wishful thinking, and he knew it.

  Diek was raising the pressure on Groan, his face contorted with the gut-wrenching effort required to steer the magic in his mind.

  Tambor took a deep breath, steeled himself, and began to climb down from his ledge to the cavern floor.

  “What’s the holdup?” shouted Jimmy, trying to peer past Gordo into the shadows beyond the portcullis. The dwarf had managed to lift the great gate once more, but he was groaning with the effort involved.

  “Pigtails reckons she can’t press the button properly,” he called. “She’s not tall enough. I know the feeling.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Jimmy, scrambling under the spikes that stabbed from the underside of the barrier. A click echoed through the tunnel, but this time Gordo waited a few seconds. Then he released his grip on the iron and stepped away. Mercifully, the portcullis stayed where it was.

  Jimmy scrambled back through the gap. “See?” he said. “No problem. There might be away out, too. She can see a light.”

  “Good.”

  Gordo turned back toward the congregation of faces. “Everyone follow me!” he shouted, and ducked under the portcullis.

  “Right,” said Jimmy. “I’m going back a bit to make sure we’ve got them all. Hopefully, we’ll meet up again out in the open.”

  Groan Teethgrit pushed hard against the boulder, but Diek’s unshakable concentration was closing the gap, fast. He felt as if he were trapped in a vise powered by the gods. The harder he fought, the more the pressure built, squashing, squeezing, crushing, until—

  It stopped, suddenly and without any apparent victory on Groan’s part. The barbarian eased himself from his crevice and lurched forward to see what had happened.

  There was a fight going on.

  From what little Groan could make out through the swirls of magic still crackling through the air, Tambor had barreled into the foreigner and was currently belting him with a bruised (but nevertheless effective) closed fist. The boy’s face was progressing through a series of strange attitudes; he looked both demonic and furious. As Groan headed toward the scuffle, Diek shot up an arm which coursed with energy and sent the old man careering back across the cavern. He gazed admiringly at his own hands and flashed the approaching barbarian an otherworldly smile.

  Good. Very good. You see? These people are no match for us.

  Groan drew his sword, swung it back in a wild arc, and let go.

  Diek caught the blade in midair, and tossed it aside. “Is that the best you can do?” he asked, his voice now exuding darkness.

  Tambor struggled to his feet, screamed in frustration, and charged.

  Diek gave an evil cackle and stepped aside, but he was a fraction too late to avoid contact completely. Tambor flew past, catching the boy with a heavy blow on the side of the head before he disappeared into the dark doorway amid a flurry of curses. There was a loud roar from beyond. The portal sizzled, as if in the process of digesting the old sorcerer. Then it began to close.

  But Diek had lost his concentration. He staggered, reeling from the old man’s blow, clutching his skull, and moaning.

  He didn’t see Groan.

  The barbarian bolted across the cavern, his muscular legs pumping with furious energy. He reached the foreigner, snatched him up by the neck, and hurled him at the shrinking darkness.

  Diek awoke from his reverie just in time to snake out a hand and grab the edge of the doorway, but it was too late.

  The portal closed. The cavern fell silent.

  The last wisp of stray magic faded away. Groan stood ready to fight, one eye on the space previously occupied by Tambor’s doorway. I’ve gotta get myself a bigger sword, he thought.

  TWENTY-NINE

  “GOOD-BYE, DULLITCH! MAY ALL your future monarchs suffer the same hellish, vomitous luck that I’ve had to endure.”

  Modeset tilted forward on tiptoe, allowed himself one final glimpse of the city, and dropped, down…down…down….

  At this point, somewhere past the third floor, he landed on a flagpole, which propelled him back up at an ala
rming speed. He subsequently erupted through the wooden floor of a balcony on the fourth floor, crashed the wrong way through its awning, clung frantically to the tattered remains of the same, swung into the palace like a crazed monkey, and landed face first on the floor of the throne room before Quaris Sands and Burnie.

  “Nice of you to drop by, milord,” said the troglodyte, ducking a brick that had followed the duke in. “At least you’re doing your bit to keep the crowd entertained.”

  There followed an inevitable outburst of derisive laughter, punctuated by some serious blasphemy from the bruised duke. This petered out when the throne-room door came crashing down, and a sea of enraged parents poured in through the gap.

  THIRTY

  SOMEHOW, BECAUSE OF A strange conjunction of circumstances, Gordo found himself playing catch-up. Since leaving the mountain, he appeared to have lost the initiative. Children milled around him, pushing and shoving (in some cases without so much as an apology). It seemed as though, via some basic instinct, they knew the way home. Perhaps, Gordo thought, you log stuff on some higher level when you’re in a trance. Remarkable.

  Jimmy caught up with him. “Bit of luck, that portcullis coming up easy,” he said.

  The dwarf scowled. “It wasn’t luck and it wasn’t easy! It was strength, boy. Never judge a man by his size.

  “Strength? You think?”

  “Yes. Do you want to make something of it?”

  “No, of course not.” Jimmy held up his hands in surrender. “I just wouldn’t of thought it, that’s all. You must be very, er, able.”

  Gordo nodded. “You ever hear of the time when Groan defeated the seven-headed dragon of Anzell Bay?”

  “Hmm…I think so,” Jimmy lied.

  “I ripped the claws off it when he’d finished.”

  “Amazing,” the thief muttered. “I bet that took some doing.”

  “Ha! It’s no fun, I can tell you, manicuring a dragon. Grime gets right under your fingernails.”

  “No, I’m sure. Have you seen Stump, by any chance?”

  “Your mate with all the hair? I thought he was with you.