"We don't think so, but no one knows for sure," I said. "It's as old as the house. Maybe older. The family might have made it, or just made use of it. Legend has it that if you pa.s.s through the Lion's Jaws, you must be pure of heart and pure of purpose, or the jaws will close on you."

"And then?" said Molly.

"Have you never seen anyone eaten by a stone head?" said the Armourer.

"I did, once," I said. "I was down in Cornwall-"

"I was speaking rhetorically!" snapped the Armourer. "I'm sorry, Molly, my dear; he always was terribly literal, even as a child."

"You mean it really does eat people?" said Molly. "If they're not...pure in heart?"

"Oh, yes," I said.

"Think I'll wait out here," said Molly.

"Relax," said the Armourer. "It's just a story we tell the children to stop them from messing around with the jaws. The crafty little b.u.g.g.e.rs are always getting into things they're not supposed to. Trust me, Molly; you'll be perfectly safe as long as you're with us. Just as well, really. I haven't been pure in heart since I was ten years old, with my first erection."

He waggled his bushy eyebrows at her, and Molly smiled dutifully. She still stood very close to me as we followed the Armourer through the Lion's Jaws and down its throat into the Armageddon Codex. Which turned out to be just another stone cavern but with terrible weapons hanging in rows upon the stone walls, like ornaments in h.e.l.l. Some hung on plaques; others stood in special niches carved from the bare stone. None of them were identified; either you knew what they were and what they could do, or you had no business touching them. I knew some of the weapons by sight and reputation from my extensive reading in the library.

There was Sunwrack, for putting out the stars one at a time. Beside it was the Juggernaut Jumpsuit. And there, the Time Hammer, for changing the past through brute force.

The Armourer noted me studying the hammer and nodded quickly. "Studying that gave me the idea for the reverse watch I gave you, Eddie. A lot of thought went into that. I hope you're taking good care of it."

I just nodded absently, still fascinated by the terrible weapons arrayed before me, things I'd never dreamed I might someday see in person. There was Winter's Sorrow, a simple crystal ball full of swirling snowflakes. It might have been a paperweight or a child's toy. But all you had to do was break the crystal, and it would unleash the Fimbulwinter: an endless season of cold and ice, all across the world, forever and ever and ever. Molly reached out a hand to touch it, saying, "Oh, cute!" And the Armourer and I both yelled at her and dragged her away. We sent her back to stand at the entrance, and she went, sulking. And then, finally, there was Oath Breaker.

It wasn't much to look at. Just a long stick of ironwood deeply carved with prehuman symbols. An ancient weapon, older than Torc Cutter, older than family history. Older than the family, probably. We have no idea who created it, or why. Perhaps they used it, and that's why there's no record of them anywhere. The Armourer finally reached out with a steady hand, and took the stick down. He grimaced, as though just the touch of it was disturbing to him. He hefted it in his hand once, and then turned abruptly and gave it to me. I accepted it gingerly. It felt...heavy, weighed down with spiritual weight rather than physical. A burden to the body and to the soul.

Because of what it was, and what it could do.

"But...it's just a stick," said Molly. She'd sneaked forward to join us again. "Is that it? I mean, is that all of it? Does it change into something else if you strike it on the ground? Or do you just plan to beat people over the head with it?"

"This is Oath Breaker," I said. My mouth was very dry, even while my hands were sweating. "It undoes all agreements, all bonds. Right down to the atomic level, if necessary."

"All right," said Molly. "Now you're scaring me."

"Good," I said. "Because it scares the c.r.a.p out of me. Armourer, give Molly Torc Cutter. Just in case."

"Go to the library," said the Armourer. "And learn what you need to know. I'll keep an eye on Alexandra. But don't take too long, Eddie. Those alarms and excursions you set off won't fool people for long."

"I know, Uncle Jack."

"The family...isn't what it was, Eddie. Part of me...wishes I could go with you when you leave. But someone has to stay and fight for the soul of the family. For the sake of the Droods, and the world."

CHAPTER TWENTY.

Getting to the Heart of the Matter "U h-oh," said Molly as we reentered the labs.

I looked at her. "This isn't going to be good news, is it?"

"The dragon charm just reappeared on my bracelet.

Which means someone in your family finally rubbed two brain cells together, realised a dragon that big couldn't possibly be real, and worked a simple dispersion spell on it. My little diversion is now officially at an end."

"They'll all head straight back into the Hall," I said, frowning. "To find out just what the dragon was diverting them from. So any minute now the whole place will be swarming with really p.i.s.sed-off Droods looking for someone to take it out on...Time we were going, Molly. It was good to see you again, Uncle Jack."

"How far is it to the library?" said Molly, practical as always.

"Too far," said the Armourer. "You're not even in the right wing."

"No problem," said Molly. "I'll just call up a spatial portal, take us right there."

"No, you won't," the Armourer said flatly. "The Hall's inner defences don't permit teleports, magical or scientific, for security reasons. Even I couldn't produce anything powerful enough to break through the Hall's defences." He broke off and scowled thoughtfully. "Not unless I can persuade the council to fund my black hole research after all..."

"If we could please stick to the subject," I said.

"There must be some way we can get to the library without being spotted," said Molly. "How about an illusion spell? I could whip up something simple, make us look like someone else. Or an aversion spell: make everyone look everywhere except at us."

"Wouldn't work," I said, "Our torcs alerts us to that kind of spell automatically. They'd just fire up their Sight and look right through them."

"When in doubt, keep it simple," said the Armourer just a little smugly. He produced two battered old lab coats from a nearby locker and thrust them at us. "Put these on. Anyone you meet will look at the coats, not your faces. The family's used to my lab a.s.sistants turning up everywhere and getting under their feet. Just keep your heads down and keep moving, and you'll be fine. d.a.m.n, I'm good..."

Molly and I slipped the lab coats on. They were both covered with an a.s.sortment of quite appalling stains, not to mention rips, cuts, and, in my case, one really serious-looking bite mark. Molly's came right down to her ankles, but I had enough sense not to smile.

"My coat smells funny," she said, glaring at me mutinously.

"Be grateful," I said. "Mine smells downright disgusting."

I turned to the Armourer, and we shook hands just a bit awkwardly. It wasn't something we did, as a rule. But we both knew we might not get a chance to do it again.

"Good-bye, Eddie," the Armourer said, meeting my gaze squarely. "I wish...there was more I could do for you."

"You've already done far more than I had any right to expect," I said.

"Good-bye, Uncle Jack."

He smiled at Molly and shook her hand too. "I'm glad Eddie's taste in women finally improved. It was a pleasure to meet you, Molly. Now get out there and give them all h.e.l.l."

"d.a.m.n right," said Molly.

Molly and I left the Armoury and carefully shut the blast-proof doors behind us. No point in advertising that the Armoury had been left open to casual visitors. I couldn't allow the Armourer to come to harm for helping me. I could already hear my family coursing through the outer sections of the Hall, searching for intruders. They were drawing steadily closer, shouting instructions and findings and comments back and forth in loud and excited voices. It sounded like the whole d.a.m.ned family had been mobilised. The Matriarch wasn't taking any chances. The lab coats would get us past a few people, but not crowds like these...All it would take was a moment of recognition, one raised voice...

Fortunately, there was another option. Just not a very nice one.

"Back when I was a kid," I said conversationally to Molly as we hurried down an empty corridor, "I worked out various ways of getting around the Hall without being seen. Because if you got caught in places where you weren't supposed to be, you got punished. Often severely punished. But luckily the Hall is very old, and down the years certain very useful hidden doors and secret pa.s.sages became lost, forgotten, displaced. And because I did a lot of reading in the library, especially in sections I wasn't supposed to have access to, I was able to turn up certain old books describing the exact locations of these very useful shortcuts.

"There are doors that can take you from one room to another, from one wing to another, without having to cross the intervening s.p.a.ce. There are narrow pa.s.sages within thick, hollow walls that used to be part of the old central heating and ventilation processes. There's a trapdoor in the bas.e.m.e.nt that opens out into the attic and some rooms that are only there on certain dates. I must have used them all, at one time or another, in my never-ending quest to discover things I wasn't supposed to know about."

"Didn't your family ever suspect?" said Molly.

"Oh, sure. Finding these old pa.s.sages is a sort of rite of pa.s.sage for young Droods; tacitly permitted, if not actually encouraged. The family likes to see initiative in its children. As long as they follow the accepted rules and traditions. But I found some very odd ways that no one else even dreamed existed, and I never told anyone. I needed something that was mine, back then, and not the family's."

"Am I to take it that you know a shortcut to the library?" said Molly.

"Yes. There's an opening into a crawl s.p.a.ce within the wall not far from here."

"Then why didn't you say so before?"

"Well," I said.

"There's bad news, isn't there? Somehow I just know there's bad news."

"It's dangerous," I said.

"How dangerous?"

"The crawl s.p.a.ce is...inhabited. You see, the Hall has to put its electrical cables and gas pipes and so on somewhere out of sight, but for security purposes they can't just be hidden away inside the walls; they have to be protected. Against sabotage and the like. So all our crawl s.p.a.ces and hidden maintenance areas are located in attached pocket dimensions. Like the Armageddon Codex and the Lion's Jaws, but on a much smaller and less dramatic scale. And a lot easier for people to get into, obviously. Anyway, some of these pocket dimensions have been around so long they've acquired their own inhabitants. Things that wandered in and...mutated. Or evolved."

"What exactly inhabits this particular crawl s.p.a.ce?" said Molly.

"Spiders," I said unhappily. "Big spiders. And I mean really big spiders; things the size of your head! Plus a whole bunch of other really nasty creepy-crawly things that the spiders feed on."

"Spiders don't bother me," said Molly. "That's more a boy thing. It's slugs that weird me out. And snails. Do you know how snails have s.e.x?"

"These spiders will bother you," I said firmly, refusing to be sidetracked. "Hopefully they're not actually as big and nasty as my childhood memories insist, because there's no way of avoiding them. Their webs are everywhere. I still have nightmares, sometimes, about all the times they chased me through the crawl s.p.a.ce...with their scuttling legs and glowing eyes..."

"Then why did you keep using that particular shortcut?" said Molly.

"Because I've never let anything stop me from doing what I need to do," I said. "Not even my own fear. Perhaps especially not that."

"And there's no other way of getting to the library?"

"Not safely."

Molly sniffed. "You have a really weird idea of what's safe and what's not, Drood."

I led her down a shadowy side corridor, past a long row of tall standing vases from the third Ming dynasty and then past a gla.s.s display case full of exquisite Venetian gla.s.s, until I came to a wood-panelled wall that stretched away into the distance. I had to keep pulling Molly along, as she got distracted by so much wealth within easy s.n.a.t.c.hing distance. I counted off the panels until I came to a particular carved wooden rose motif, and then I turned it carefully left and right the correct number of times until the primitive combination lock reluctantly fell into place. The rose clicked loudly, and a panel in the wall slid jerkily open. The ancient mechanism must be wearing out. Beyond the panel and inside the wall, there was only darkness.

The opening that had been more than ample for a child was only just big enough to let Molly and me squeeze through. We crouched down before the opening and peered into the darkness. A slow cold breeze came out of the dark, carrying a dry, dusty smell. Molly wrinkled her nose but said nothing. Thick strands of cobweb hung down inside the opening, swaying heavily on the breeze. There was no sign that anybody had been in the crawl s.p.a.ce in years. I listened quietly, gesturing sharply for Molly to keep still when she fidgeted. I couldn't hear anything. For the moment. I took a deep breath, braced myself, and then squeezed quickly through the cramped opening before I could change my mind. Molly followed me in, crowding right behind me, and the wooden panel slid jerkily back into place.

The darkness was absolute. Molly quickly conjured up a handful of her trademark witchfire, and the shimmering silver light showed us a narrow stone tunnel, the rough gray walls all but buried under acc.u.mulated layers of colour-coded wiring, cables, and copper and bra.s.s tubing. Thick mats of webbing crawled across the surface of both walls. I grimaced despite myself, even though I was careful not to touch or disturb any of it. Molly's witchlight showed the tunnel stretching away before us, but if there was a ceiling, the light couldn't reach high enough to find it. A thick streamer of webbing blew away from one wall, carried on the gusting breeze, and I flinched away from it.

"You big baby," said Molly, grinning broadly.

"Isn't that a slug by your foot?" I said, and grinned as Molly made a loud eeking noise.

I led the way down the tunnel. Pride would allow no less. The floor was thick with undisturbed dust. Even the smallest sounds we made seemed to echo on forever; the only sounds in that endless eerie silence. The tunnel steadily widened until it seemed the size of a room, and then a hall, and then abruptly it widened out still farther until I could no longer tell how big a s.p.a.ce we were moving in. I stuck close to the right-hand wall, its familiar man-made cables and piping a comfort to me. Until they became so thickly buried under webbing I could no longer see them clearly.

Molly boosted her witchlight as much as possible, but the light didn't travel far. Beyond a certain point, the darkness just seemed to soak it up. There was a feeling of spae...stretching away, endlessly. We walked and walked, and the journey was just as bad as I remembered. Perhaps more so; I kept coming across suddenly familiar details that I hadn't let myself remember. Like the hollow husks of really big insects and beetles scattered across the floor, their insides chewed out. And the thick strands of webbing that hung down from somewhere high above us, twitching and twisting even though the breeze was no longer blowing. I was amazed I'd found the courage to come this way back when I was just a kid. But thinking of the Sarjeant-at-Arms's punishments had made it easy. I was far more scared of him than I ever was of giant spiders. Even though I was pretty sure he wouldn't have actually killed me.

There were noises out in the dark. Scuttling, scurrying noises. Molly and I stopped short and looked around us. Molly held her handful of light up high, but it didn't help. Soft wet sounds came from behind and up ahead, along with slow sc.r.a.ping sounds, like claws on stone.

"Okay," said Molly. "This is seriously creeping me out."

"Are you sure you can't make any more light?" I said. "I don't think they like the light."

"I'm giving it all I've got," snapped Molly, sounding just a bit strained.

"Something in this pocket dimension of yours doesn't like light. It's all I can do to maintain what I've got. How much farther to the library?"

"Still some way yet," I said. "If I'm remembering correctly. Follow me, hurry as much as you can, but don't run. They chase anything that runs. I found that out the hard way."

We moved on, striding quickly through the dark. The webbing hanging down from above was getting thicker, heavier, like hanging curtains of dirty gauze. I ducked around them, careful not to let any of them touch me. They were all stirring restlessly now, twitching as though disturbed from a long sleep. And always there were the noises out in the dark, slowly but steadily closing in on us. Molly and I moved as quickly as we could without actually running. We were both breathing hard.

We almost ran straight into the ma.s.sive web that blocked our way, its silver gray threads only showing up in the witchlight at the very last moment. It hung unsupported on the air before us, huge and intricate, radiating away beyond the limits of the witchlight. It would take a spider the size of a bus to spin a web that size. Or an awful lot of smaller spiders working together. I wasn't sure which thought was the most disturbing. It very definitely hadn't been here the last time I came this way.

"That...is a big web," said Molly. "Still, I've got some shears and you've got a b.l.o.o.d.y big stick. Do we smash our way through?"

"Can't help feeling that's a bad idea," I said. "But we don't have any choice. We have to go on..."

"Look," said Molly. "If you're really that worried, armour up."

"I can't," I said. "The rules of reality work differently here. The armour won't come. I found that out the hard way too."

"Now he tells me," said Molly. "Okay, it's time to squeeze one out or get off the pot. We can't go back, so...burn, baby, burn!"

She thrust her handful of witchfire into the nearest clump of threads, and they caught alight immediately, burning with a fierce blue light. The fires shot up and along the trembling threads, spreading quickly across the huge cobweb. And in this new, revealing light, Molly and I could at last see what it was that had been following us all this time. We were surrounded by an army of spiders, thousands of them, stretching away for as far as the light carried, and probably beyond. And they were all really big spiders. Black furry bodies the size of my head, many-jointed legs a yard or more long, cl.u.s.ters of eyes that glowed like precious jewels. And heavy mouth parts that clacked viciously together, drooling a thick saliva.

"Run," I said.

Molly and I burst through the burning remains of the web, slapping aside the entangling threads. The spiders came after us like a great black wave, silent except for the pattering of their many legs on the dusty stone floor. This close, I could smell them; a sour, bitter smell, like acid and spoiled meat. Something else I'd made myself forget, down the years...Molly and I sprinted through the dark, pushing ourselves as hard as we could. Horrid pain slammed through the whole of my left side with every step, forcing tortured sounds past my clenched teeth. So much tension and exercise must be spreading the strange matter farther through my system. I managed a small smile at the thought of the spiders behind me.

Hope I poison you, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds...

I could feel myself slowing. Molly was leaving me behind as she kept up a pace I could no longer match. I could have called out to her, but I didn't. One of us had to get out. She looked back anyway, realised she was getting too far ahead, and dropped back to grab me by the arm and urge me on. Thank G.o.d she grabbed my good arm. A spider came sailing through the air towards me on the end of a long streamer of webbing, like a big black hairy balloon. I lashed out with Oath Breaker, and the heavy ironwood stick struck the giant spider right among its eyes. The body exploded in a wet splatter of flying innards. More spiders came sailing out of the darkness. I struck about me with Oath Breaker, killing everything I hit. Molly threw handfuls of witchfire this way and that, and burning spider bodies fell out of the air.

We ran on, not as swiftly as before, our feet squelching heavily through pulped spider remains on the floor, sometimes still shuddering and twitching. The spiders were swarming close behind us now, almost on our heels. I thought longingly about the Colt Repeater in its shoulder holster, but in the time it would take me to stop and wrestle the gun out of the holster, the spiders would be all over me. So I just kept going, fighting for breath now, crying out at the pain within me, lashing increasingly wildly about me with Oath Breaker, which seemed to grow heavier with every blow.

The exit from the crawl s.p.a.ce wasn't far now, I was sure. I was almost sure.

We slowed still more, exhausted by the long day, and the spiders caught up and swarmed all over us, clawing and biting. Molly and I stumbled on, crying out in pain and shock and disgust. I pulped their soft squishy bodies with my bare hands, thrusting Oath Breaker through my belt. Molly brushed the spiders away with her handful of witchfire, and the burning bodies fell away from her to skitter madly back and forth on the floor, blazing brightly in the dark. But there were always more climbing all over us, dropping out of the air. Both Molly and I were yelling out loud now as we beat the things away. More scurried around our moving feet, darting up our legs or trying to trip us, but they were too light and flimsy, for all their size. We crushed them underfoot and stumbled on.

Until finally I saw, in the flickering witchlight, a familiar sight up ahead. The exit panel for the crawl s.p.a.ce, leading back into the Hall. Into light and warmth and sanity. I could see it up ahead, light from outside shining brightly past its edges, clear as day in the endless crawl s.p.a.ce dark.