eyond the doors lay a large chamber. On one side was a vast window that arched at its top, looking out over the battlefield. A burning hearth faced a grey granite table that had been carefully prepared with a banquet of roasted meats, wine and fruit. Two men were seated there. Atticus Fife, the tin-skin and would-be leader of the Twelve, and a man who Ned had never seen before. He was dressed from head to toe in gold. Their faces were planted unceremoniously in their plates because, like Sar-adin before them, Barbarossa’s guests were now entirely dead.
In front of the window was a circular opening in the floor the size of a swimming pool. Ned could see that it ran all the way down to the base of Barbarossa’s fortress. Up its sides, reaching to the top, more strands of oozing darkness flowed.
Standing in front of it was the pirate-butcher himself. Even as his Guardians turned outside, he smiled as only a madman could.
“You came alone? But I prepared a little welcoming committee! Never mind, at least you’re here now. Tell me, are you hungry? I sent the staff away so I could enjoy this in peace. There’s a wonderful view and it would be such a shame to let Sar-adin’s hard work go to waste, especially as he’s become such a good friend of yours.”
So Barba had known! That at least explained the Demons at Sar-adin’s feet outside and the dagger in his belly. Ned could see the knuckles in Benissimo’s hand turn white and his whip was wagging now, like the tail of a lion before a lunge.
“Stop this! Stop this madness before it’s too late!”
Barbarossa’s eyes were wild and dark, his bowler hat was missing and his clothes torn.
“Madness? You’re as bad as these two. Atticus, aren’t you going to say anything to our guests? My brother and the children have had an exhausting journey.”
Ned realised that Benissimo was right – Barbarossa had quite clearly lost his mind.
“He’s dead, you fool, and no doubt by your own hand!”
Barbarossa looked at his brother and squinted, then back to the battlefield.
“Dead? Dead, dead, dead. Oh yes, that’s right, though Fife put up quite the fight before I finished him. We had a difference of opinion if I recall rightly – it’s been quite a day. You see, dear brother, everyone wants something. The Shar there wanted wealth – he saw this whole operation as a business opportunity. As for Fife, well … he thought he might walk away from it all with Europe – imagine that? I suppose in hindsight that is what they were promised, but in the end, you see, we couldn’t escape one rather important issue.”
As he spoke, Lucy took the bag from her shoulder and Benissimo edged forward. By the hole in the ground Ned could see more of the ink-like fluid seeping up and over its edge.
“Which is?” asked Benissimo.
“I WANT IT ALL!”
Benissimo looked to the window. Outside, two of the Daedali were burning and one was crashing to the ground. The Central Intelligence’s Guardians had initially been designed to fight Demons and they were doing so now to great effect as the fair-folk charged the fortress.
“The Guardians have turned, your Demons are losing and your ships have been knocked from the sky,” tried Benissimo, hoping even now that his brother might see sense.
“Look again, fratello.”
Ned saw it first. Along the ground at the forest’s edge and on their side of the fortress the same oily darkness was spreading, creeping through the mud and up metal ramparts. Benissimo, the Viceroy and Mr Fox’s forces were too engaged in the battle to see, for what little good it would have done them.
Bene recoiled in horror. “You’re going to kill them all?!”
“I don’t want to really, but our friend has a terrible hunger,” Barbarossa said, and looked to his hole in the floor and the darkness forming at its edges.
“Now, Lucy, NOW!” barked Benissimo, and his arm ripped forward, striking at Barbarossa with his whip.
The butcher took the lashing with an ugly grin and launched himself at his brother. In a second they were on the floor and rolling, arms flailing and eyes locked.
Lucy almost tore the bag apart as she pulled out the Heart Stone.
“Lucy, the Source back in Annapurna,” said Ned, thinking fast, “it’s connected, literally, to magic, to everything. If the Tinker’s right and it was designed to work like the Heart Stone, then we have to connect to it, the way we did before.”
The Darkening King’s inky fluid bubbled up from the chamber’s hole and began to flow more freely now, on to the ground and towards Ned and Lucy.
“Well, whatever we do – we have to do it now!”
Ned got down on his knees next to Lucy. Even as he took her hand and they placed their other hands on the stone’s cool surface, he could feel the Amplification-Engine at his finger stir. Beneath the skin its tiny tendrils came alive, connecting to his every nerve, and in there, in that brief moment, he felt Lucy with him. The stone warmed, either from Ned and Lucy’s touch or with a power all of its own.
“I think it’s working,” gasped Lucy.
Around them the oozing darkness rose, till Ned heard his familiar quaking behind him.
“Unt!” it whimpered. “Unt, unt, unt.”
“NOT NOW, GORRN!”
“ChHillLdDrrENn.”
Ned could feel a building power, not in the stone itself, but connected to it. Like the Source, it was a conduit for magic itself, and like the Darkening King it had a voice, but a voice without words. How could Ned speak to it? He tried in the same way he used his ring – to bring it under his control, to tell it what he wanted it to do …
“Ned? Ned, we’re losing it – the connection’s fading!”
From the great hole a gush of black fluid tore upwards, striking at Ned and Lucy, while the Heart Stone was sent skittering across the ground. To his right, Lucy lay howling in pain.
As soon as the creature touched his skin, Ned felt all the light and joy of the world being drawn out of him; his every happy thought, of his mum and dad, of dear old Gummy and Arch, of Lucy and George, suddenly distant and dark. There was nothing but an empty void, an endless darkness, and it called his name.
“NnEedD.”