Property of a Lady Faire (A Secret Histories Novel) (26 page)

Molly sniffed loudly, conjured up a handful of hellfire, and threw it at the frozen Door. The blazing flames splashed harmlessly against the ice, fell away, and disappeared. Not a single drop of melted water ran down the ice covering the Door. Instead, the Storeroom’s sprinklers opened up, directly over the Door. I jumped back to avoid being soaked, dragging Molly with me. The Doormouse had backed away the moment Molly conjured up her fires. He barked a command at the sprinklers, and they turned themselves off. The Doormouse looked pityingly at Molly.

“Like I hadn’t already tried that . . .”

“Bet you didn’t try this,” I said.

I subvocalised my activating Words, and armoured up. The Doormouse made a high chittering noise and backed away several steps. Drood armour always makes a strong first impression. I stepped up to the Door, and was surprised to find I could still feel primordial cold radiating from the block of ice, even through my armour. It was protecting me, but I could still feel it. I hit the block of ice with my armoured fist, and it just glanced away, without doing the slightest damage. I could punch a hole through a mountain with my armour on, but I hadn’t even cracked this ice. I hit the block again and again, all my armour’s strength behind every blow, and my golden fist just jarred harmlessly against the thick ice.

I threw my arms around the frozen block and wrestled with it, and for the first time, the ice cracked. Thick shards fell away, to shatter on the floor. The Doormouse made a loud, shocked sound. Molly cheered me on. I threw everything I had against the ice, and it cracked again, a long, jagged line from top to bottom. But still it wouldn’t break.

A thick layer of hoarfrost formed on the front of my armour, and I could feel the terrible cold creeping in. Forcing its way past my armour’s defences. I struggled with the ice block, throwing all my armour’s power against it, and the ice defied me. The awful cold sank deep into my flesh, into my bones. I was shaking and shuddering inside my armour, gritting my teeth to keep them from chattering, and to keep myself from crying out in pain and shock. Until finally I had no choice but to let go, and stagger backwards, before the cold penetrated my heart, and perhaps my soul.

I stood there, glaring at the great block of ice, breathing hard. The ice covering the Door had already repaired and restored itself, looking thicker and even more impenetrable than before. I had been defeated by the cold, by the winter of the world, Ultima Thule. I looked at the Doormouse, and he nodded slowly.

“So,” he said. “Drood armour does have its limitations. Interesting to know . . .”

I armoured down, shaking and shuddering convulsively. Molly threw her arms around me and held me tightly to her, using the warmth of her body to drive the cold out of mine. I held her close, and the cold quickly fell away. The Doormouse stood off to one side, tactfully staring into the distance. I finally patted Molly on the back, to let her know I was all right again, and we let go and stepped back from each other. We shared a smile. The Doormouse cleared his throat loudly.

“Only a Drood would try to wrestle winter itself. Still, you actually cracked the ice of Ultima Thule! I am impressed, young Drood! Really!”

“That . . . was serious cold,” I said, looking at the ice-covered Door with respect.

“Well, yes,” said the Doormouse. “I mean, the clue is in the name.
Ultima Thule
, the ultimate cold. The unending winter of the world. And you’re telling me you want to go there?”

“I don’t want to brag,” said Molly, “though I’m going to . . . I have been to the Antarctic, without any special clothes or equipment. I can handle cold.”

“That’s natural cold,” the Doormouse said severely. “There is nothing natural about Ultima Thule. It’s a pocket dimension, a created reality, a world within a world, with its own rules. I’ve always believed it was made to store something . . . I don’t know what, and I don’t want to. But I’d hate to think what might happen if it ever thaws . . . and gets out.”

Molly looked at me. “We are going to need more than long thermal underwear . . .”

“I’ve got my armour,” I said, “and you’ve got your magics. We can survive long enough to reach the Winter Palace.” I looked at the Doormouse. “All right, we can’t go direct. Is there an . . . indirect way of getting there?”

“Of course!” said the Doormouse. “If logic and reason aren’t enough to scare you off, then I feel I have done all that can reasonably be required of me. I may ask you to sign something to that effect before you go. I can provide you with a Door that will drop you off on the Trans-Siberian Express! One of the last surviving steam trains still running in the world today, from Eastern Europe to Siberia, all the way across Russia, and beyond. Somewhere along the way, you will pass by a naturally occurring dimensional Door that opens onto Ultima Thule. I think it’s a crack in the world, or perhaps even a mistake in the original calculations. Or maybe a back door into Ultima Thule left by the dimension’s original designer. Very few people know it even exists. It isn’t always there and it won’t stay open for long, but it should be there for the next thirty-six hours.”

“Should?” I said.

“Best I can do,” said the Doormouse.

“We’ll take it,” said Molly.

• • •

The Doormouse bustled back through the long lines of Doors, and Molly and I went with him. I took the opportunity to ask him what he knew about the Merlin Glass, on the grounds that anyone as interested as in Doors as he is should have at least heard of it. The Doormouse was immediately so excited that nothing would do but that I get the hand mirror out and show it to him. He preferred not to hold the Glass himself, so I had to hold the mirror as he leaned forward, bent so far over that the tip of his muzzle almost touched the Glass. He kept his arms behind his back, so he could be sure he wouldn’t accidentally touch the mirror. His eyes gleamed brightly, and his long whiskers went into full twitch mode. After a while, he backed carefully away and looked at me thoughtfully.

“Now that is interesting . . . Come with me, dear boy, and we’ll take a closer look, in my laboratory.”

“What about our Door?” said Molly.

“Patience, dear girl, patience! Now come along, come along!”

He scurried off, ducking and diving between the standing Doors, and we had no choice but to go after him. He took a sudden sharp turn to the left, and opened a fairly ordinary-looking door that I would have sworn wasn’t there a moment before. I glanced at Molly, we both shrugged more or less simultaneously, and we went through the door after him.

We found ourselves in a large open workplace, a scientific laboratory with dozens of work-benches, all kinds of equipment, and enough different projects on the go to keep even my uncle Jack happy. The workstations were covered with all kinds of partially assembled high tech, some of it so advanced, alien, or just plain
other
, that I couldn’t even recognise what it was, never mind guess what it might be for. Some were clearly functioning, flashing lights or making odd sounds, while others seemed to be moving on their own, to some unknown purpose. One had almost reached the edge of its bench, and the Doormouse absently pushed it back to the middle again. He smiled at me encouragingly, and gestured for me to set the hand mirror down on a work-bench already crowded with half-finished things. I looked for some open space, and the Doormouse swept it all away with one quick brush of his arm. Many things crashed to the floor, but the Doormouse only had eyes for the Merlin Glass. I set it down on the bench, and stepped back. He immediately leaned right over the mirror again, making soft humming sounds to himself.

“What do you know about the Merlin Glass?” I said bluntly.

“I have been aware of it for some time,” said the Doormouse, not looking away. “Your uncle Jack and I do consult, from time to time, on occasion. On matters of . . . mutual interest. And I know something of the Glass’ history, of course. It is one of the great Mysteries of the world, after all. You didn’t know? I am surprised . . . The London Knights had the Merlin Glass under lock and key for centuries, until one of them returned it to your uncle Jack a few years back.”

“Wait a minute!” I said. “The London Knights had it? But Merlin gave the Glass to my family! Why did the Knights have it for so long? And why would they give it back?”

“Ask your uncle Jack,” said the Doormouse.

“No, wait, hold on just a minute,” I said. “I looked this up, in the family archives. Merlin Satanspawn made a gift of the Glass to my family, not the London bloody Knights!”

“Oh, he gave the Glass to the Droods, right enough,” said the Doormouse. “But your family knew, better than most, that you should always beware sorcerers bearing gifts. At some point, they chose to give the Glass to the London Knights. For safekeeping, perhaps? Or in return for . . . something else? I really don’t know. Perhaps you should go back and check your family archives more carefully . . .”

“Do you know why Merlin gave the Glass to my family in the first place?” I said.

The Doormouse looked at me, and if there was any expression on his furry face, I couldn’t read it. “If you don’t know, young Drood, I certainly don’t.”

He turned back to his work-bench, and reached out a fuzzy paw to the hand mirror. It slid smoothly away from him, across the bench. The Doormouse blinked a few times and then tried again, with his other paw. The hand mirror jerked back several inches, refusing to be touched. The Doormouse muttered something quite astonishingly obscene, and grabbed at the Glass with both paws. It shot back and forth across the bench, like a drop of water on a hot surface, avoiding his grasp no matter how quickly he moved. The Doormouse finally gave up and stood back, breathing hard.

“It has been acting up, just lately,” I said. “Almost as though it has a mind of its own. I was told . . . there might be something alive or aware, hiding or imprisoned, inside the mirror’s reflection. I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything, but . . .”

“That’s Merlin Satanspawn for you,” said the Doormouse. “Always thinking three steps ahead of everyone else. I think . . . we need to take a closer look at this. Yes . . .”

He turned abruptly away from the work-bench, and hurried off to trot back and forth among the larger pieces of scientific equipment cluttering up his laboratory. He peered closely at some, patted others familiarly like old friends, rejecting one after another as he searched for something specific. There was something about the Doormouse’s laboratory that reminded me irresistibly of the Armourer’s workplace. Though thankfully there weren’t any little mouse lab assistants scuttling around. I took the opportunity to look closely at several half-finished Doors standing off to one side. Bits and pieces protruded, strange tech that made no sense at all to me. Some of the Doors’ insides were so complicated I couldn’t even seem to focus on them properly. As though they possessed too many spatial dimensions for the human mind to cope with.

Molly wandered around, prodding things, until I asked her very politely not to.

The Doormouse came back, huffing and puffing as he pushed a huge piece of equipment ahead of him. It looked a bit like one of those really big telescopes you see in observatories, except for all the ways in which it didn’t. The Doormouse pushed one end right up to the Merlin Glass, which was resting on the work-bench, apparently at peace for the moment, and then he retreated some distance, to peer through an eyepiece on the far end of the apparatus.

“What is that thing?” I muttered to Molly.

“Beats the hell out of me,” she murmured back. “Just looking at half the stuff in this place gives me a headache. Why did you have to get him started on the Glass? We could have been out of here by now!”

I shrugged. I didn’t really have an answer, except that I didn’t like not being able to trust something I’d come to depend on so much. I glared at the Merlin Glass, hoping it would stay put if I just kept my attention fixed on it. I half expected it to jump up off the work-bench, and try to force itself back into my pocket. The Doormouse had his furry face screwed right up, his eye jammed against the eyepiece of the thing that wasn’t a telescope. All the while muttering to himself and pulling distractedly at his whiskers. He finally came out from behind the thing and hurried over to stand with Molly and me. He glowered at the Merlin Glass, but didn’t try to touch it again.

“Interesting,” he said.

“What is?” said Molly. “What?”

The Doormouse looked at me carefully. “You’ve been using the Glass as a Door, mostly?”

“Yes,” I said. That much I was sure of.

“The Merlin Glass has a great many other functions and capabilities built into it,” said the Doormouse. “Some of which have apparently never been accessed, never mind activated. This is a very intricate piece of work . . . I looked inside it, and it just seemed to fall away forever . . . There are layers upon layers, levels within levels. Merlin always was ahead of his Time. I can’t even say for sure what the original purpose of the Glass was. What he intended it to do for the Droods. Or to them . . .”

“Is it . . . I don’t know—alive, or aware?” I said.

“I didn’t see anything to suggest that,” the Doormouse said carefully. “Though it does seem to have a strong survival instinct built in. I suppose Merlin thought it would need that if it was going to hang around with Droods.”

“Is there anyone, or anything, present in the reflection?” I said.

“Oh yes,” said the Doormouse quite casually. He seemed to be concentrating on something else. “I saw it, briefly, looking back at me. Don’t know what it was, though. Or why it’s there. It seemed to be hiding from my equipment, though before today I would have said that was impossible. So! The Merlin Glass has been operating quite efficiently as a Door?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then I should just use it for that,” said the Doormouse.

“So there’s nothing to worry about, with the Glass?” said Molly.

“I didn’t say that,” said the Doormouse. “I’m just fed up looking at it. Damn thing’s given me a headache.”

I picked up the hand mirror from the work-bench. It didn’t try to avoid my touch. I looked into the mirror, and my reflection stared innocently back at me. I looked carefully at what lay behind me in the reflection, but I couldn’t see anyone, or anything, that shouldn’t be there. I put the Glass away.