horrified Ned could only watch as the vast throne room woke from its trance. Beneath him the ligron growled, its claws digging into the ground for purchase. Lemnus’s pet was preparing to charge. In its way: every noble and knight of the Seelie Court. Plates of food were dropped and pirouettes abandoned in stumbled falls as the room followed the scream to its source.
“Fox, get them to hold on!”
“Easier said than done!” shouted back Mr Fox, who was doing everything to rouse the Armstrongs and Benissimo short of slapping their faces, until he finally did just that.
“Odin’s beard, man, what are you doing?” spat Benissimo. Then his eyes focused on the room. “Oh …”
ROAR!
With a great lurch the ligron charged, smashing through an oak table and its gathered Fey like a bowling ball through a set of pins. The fairies there screamed and scattered, and the ligron continued its assault. Ned clung on to its fur with every ounce of his strength.
“Barking dogs, Lucy! Hold on!”
“WHAT DO YOU THINK I’M DOING?!”
Faster and faster the beast ran, piling through rows of panicked and angry Fey. Tables, chairs, dishes and jugs were cracked and smashed to pieces till one scream became a hundred and the room turned. At the far end, where the Fey had had more time to wake from their slumber, weapons were drawn and a hastily made barrier of tables raised. The ligron roared again, charging like a furred bull at the throng of waiting fairies. Ned ducked as a flurry of needle-thin arrows launched from the backs of hummingbirds narrowly missed him. Above them, the taller fairies threw spears of thorn-tipped vine.
“Argh!” yelped Lucy, as something tore into her, her arm now bleeding badly.
“BRACE!” screamed Ned.
CRASH.
The ligron lunged at the barrier of tables before them, nearly knocking Ned’s dazed dad from its back. Mr Fox’s arm shot out and pulled him upright again with a mighty heave. The ligron at last managed to claw its way up and over the barrier, Ned’s heart leaping into his mouth as a dozen blades screamed by their legs and feet. They landed on the other side, crushing three larger fairies with a painful crack, and the beast sped on.
Up the spiral staircase and through the Fey’s courtyards and squares it ran, behind them a tidal wave of winged and angry assailants.
“Ooh, so pretty,” sang Ned’s mum as another spear flew by their heads.
“Mum, wake up!” shouted Ned, face now turned to their pursuers.
Closing the gap was a buzzing, chattering throng of armed fairies. Some flew, some galloped, others sped along the walls and ceilings like angered ants protecting their nest. For a moment, Ned felt sorry for them. Their prized possession and the source of their magic had been stolen just as they had stolen it from Tiamat. Etched on each and every face was a hatred he’d rarely seen and never by so many aimed at so few.
A hummingbird dived from above, planting its razor-sharp beak in his cheek.
“Argh!”
His sorrow promptly left him in a spray of blood as he swatted at the bird and its rider.
“Ned! Watch out!” yelled Lucy.
Ned turned just in time to see a wall of vines thickening in front of them.
“STOP!” he yelled, pulling at the ligron’s mane in a violent attempt to avoid their collision, but the ligron leapt forward, howling as the closing greenery stabbed at its sides. There was a burst of light and their mount stumbled, its paw tangled in some knotted snare, and they were all thrown violently over its head, landing in a painful heap at the centre of the glade.
Finally Ned’s parents had been knocked back to their senses, as had Benissimo.
“Mr Fox, what are Ned and Lucy doing here?” said his mum as she pulled herself off the ground.
“I should think that’s obvious, madam.”
“Don’t you madam me, young man!”
But the Ringmaster, as always, had other things on his mind. “The stone, man – do you have the stone?”
Mr Fox did not answer, as his eyes were fully focused on the gap beyond both Benissimo and Olivia Armstrong. Ned and his allies had kicked a hornets’ nest. To one side of them was a growing throng of bloodthirsty fairies; to the other a mass of now thorny glade, rising and closing by the second.
The wounded ligron turned its massive bulk and limped in front of them.
“Lucy, Ned, I thought Lemnus said that the glade wasn’t under the Fey’s control?”
“Lemnus Gemfeather?!” stammered Benissimo. “He’s been helping you?”
“Apparently by order of his king,” replied Mr Fox, drawing his gun.
“Lucy, Ned, get behind us,” ordered Ned’s dad.
A suddenly alert Terry Armstrong blinked and a throng of stone projectiles hung in the air in front of him.
Benissimo unfurled his whip and Olivia had picked up a thick branch from the ground that she was stripping for use as a club. The ligron stooped its head low – wounded or not, it had at least one last charge to give them.
“Mum, Dad, don’t hurt them! None of this is their fault. They just want their stone back.”
“Yes, dear, and I am quite certain they will tear us limb from limb to get it.”
Lucy stood by Ned and raised a hand to his cheek, and in a burning second the gash the hummingbird had made left him.
“Thanks. You may have to do quite a bit of that in a minute.”
Almost on cue, Ned’s familiar slipped out of his pocket and slithered to the ground. Gorrn was clearly terrified but would not let his master face the Fey or glade without at least a little fighting and biting of his own.
Lucy smiled at the creature then her eyes locked to Ned’s, clear and bright.
“Now would be a good time to fire up your ring.”
“Right,” said Ned.
“Right,” repeated Lucy and her face hardened.
Ned Armstrong, last in a long line of Engineers, stood by his friend and Medic, and turned to face the Fey. He could hear the yawn of the glade’s stretching thorns behind them, and in front of them was a now slowing army of vengeful fairies, glowing with magic and menace as they prepared to charge. There would be no running.
Ned shut his eyes. He dug deeper than he’d ever had to. He thought of his parents, of Lucy, of everyone he’d ever loved or cared about, and deep in his chest something stirred. Defiance, bravery or sheer unbridled love – it moved in him like a tidal wave, and his ring finger burned … then suddenly fizzled to nothing.
The Fey charged and the ground shook. Ned looked to Lucy in staggered disbelief, then to his dear mum and dad, his friend the Ringmaster. He could do nothing to save them, nothing but stand there and watch.
Closer and closer they came. Ned’s parents looked back to their son. It was a look only a parent can make, a look that says, “Be brave – we have you,” knowing full well that they would be the first to fall.
At the final moment, when the reds, greens and violets of the fairies’ eyes were on them, Lemnus Gemfeather, protector and betrayer of the Heart Stone, pulled himself out of the ground and placed himself between them all.
As he did so, a great voice boomed through the air speaking in words that neither Ned nor his companions understood. Outraged and utterly perplexed, the fairies lowered their weapons in silent fury. Behind Ned, the glade withdrew till the door they had first walked through revealed itself once more.
Lemnus calmly walked up to Ned and his party, and bowed. “Go on – now, quickly. Through the door.”
“Gemfeather,” said Benissimo, giving Lemnus a reverent bow, “what in Zeus’s name was that voice?”
“Zeus? No, no, Your Ringship – it was Oberon. In our realm a fairy king’s bargain, no matter its edge, cannot be refused.”
“What did he offer in return?”
“His life,” said Lemnus sadly. “Do not waste it, Benissimo – defeat the Demon, and destroy the stone.”
***
Perched on a windowsill above a dark alley sat a grey and white pigeon. It did not coo, nor did it fawn with any other of its kind, because under its feathers and beak beat a clockwork heart made up entirely of brass. The Turing Mark Three had sat on the exact same spot for more than two days. Occasionally its ticker mind would remember to do something “pigeony” and it would coo, or ruffle its wings, but its gaze had not left the Fey’s secret doorway in the alley for even a second.
Its lenses clicked in quick succession as the door opened and four adults with two children walked through it, then refocused and clicked again at the silk-wrapped object in the boy’s hand.
A ruffle of feathers later and the Turing Mark Three took to the sky. It would be a long flight back to the taiga and Barbarossa was waiting.