The Underground City, page 5
“What … what did they look like?” Clara asked in alarm. “Did they scare you?”
“They did, actually,” admitted Neil. “They looked awful. Sort of empty eyes, you know.”
“Did they know you could see them?”
“Yeah, that was the problem really …”
“Problem?” croaked Kitor.
Neil nodded and starting from the beginning, told them everything that had happened in the Close.
“So you saw Mary King herself. What was she like?”
“Quite old, I think. She wore a sort of bonnet on her head and was quite well-dressed. You know, long skirt, blouse and a kind of thick shawl affair. I’m sure she wrote the message, ‘cos she was pointing to it when it appeared.”
“What did it say again?”
“Neil. We need your help. Come again. Mary King.”
“You’re not going to go back, though, are you?” queried Kitor anxiously.
“I might. Just to see what they want.”
“They can hurt you, Neil. Look what the ghosts did to this Graham Flint that you told us about.”
“There was a reason for that, though. He’d made a fool out of me and they didn’t like it.”
“It must have scared him though!”
“Scared him! It scared him stupid!” Neil grinned. “I told you, he was howling like a baby!”
Clara looked dubious. “You’re having me on, aren’t you? Graham! Crying?” she said.
Kitor flapped his wings, ruffling Clara’s long, brown hair. “You shouldn’t have worn your firestone,” the crow said. “It was asking for trouble and now look what has happened! You’re involved with ghosts!”
“Kitor’s right, you know,” Clara said. “What on earth do they want to see you for? You don’t know their motives. They could be trying to trap you.”
Neil shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “They stuck up for me, after all. If Graham hadn’t tried to make a fool of me they’d never have shoved him into a wall or frozen him half to death!”
“I wish the MacArthurs were here,” sighed Clara. “We could have asked Hamish or Archie what to do.”
“Why not ask your father or Sir James?” suggested Kitor reasonably.
Neil and Clara both looked at the crow in disgust. “Get a life, Kitor,” Neil advised. “Ask my dad? He’d freak out!”
“Too right!” agreed Clara.
“I don’t see how I’m going to be able to get into Mary King’s Close, anyway,” Neil said, thinking about it. “I could get in with another tour, I suppose, but it’d be expensive and the guides are sharp. They count you in and don’t let you wander off.”
“And at night, the whole place will be locked up …” added Clara.
“There is a way, though!” Neil said, suddenly. “I could go in on my magic carpet one afternoon after school. I’d be invisible. No one would see me.”
Clara sat up. “What on earth do you mean? You’d go in on your magic carpet! No way are you going down into Mary King’s Close on your own, Neil! I’m coming too!”
Neil looked at her doubtfully. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea, Clara. Really! The ghosts are a bit frightening when you see them close up. You’d be scared! I know you would!”
Kitor looked undecided for a moment. He didn’t fancy going under the ground into dark streets either but he was no coward and, after all, Neil couldn’t possibly be allowed to go on his own. “Don’t worry, Clara,” he said. “I’ll go with Neil.”
“Well, you can certainly come,” she muttered angrily, “but if Neil goes then I’m definitely going as well!”
8. Ardray
Lewis looked at the now familiar face that confronted him in his bathroom mirror every morning. “You’re nuts,” he said in disbelief. “First of all, you want me to say ‘carpet, carpet’ and clap my hands and now you want me to open my bedroom window. Haven’t you seen the weather? It’s snowing outside, for goodness sake!”
“It’s a request, Lewis,” Prince Casimir smiled, “a request, not a command. If you would just open your window for a few minutes … to please me, Lewis!”
Lewis grinned and stuck his tongue out at the djinn before heading for the bedroom where he pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater. Casimir seethed furiously. Just let him wait! Once he got him to Ardray, he’d soon teach him to show some respect for his elders and betters!
“If my mother comes in and finds the window open, I’m in trouble,” Lewis said aloud, knowing that the djinn could hear him. “The central heating’s on full blast, you know!” Nevertheless, he went to one of the windows and, hooking his fingers through the old-fashioned brass rings, pulled the window up. Six inches was enough. The magic carpet that had been hovering outside almost knocked him on his back as it flew in on the icy blast that whistled through the room.
Lewis scrambled to his feet, pushed the window down and stomped into the bathroom so that he could speak to Casimir face to face. “You might have told me you were expecting a magic carpet!” he said in annoyance. “It gave me the fright of my life!”
Casimir, however, was still dizzy with relief at the return of his carpet! It had answered his call. Now he could go home. Home to Ardray!
“That little mirror we bought yesterday, Lewis. Look into it, will you, so that I can talk to you in the bedroom and tell you about my carpet.”
Lewis nodded and went to fetch the mirror, wondering why he had ever been worried at the thought of having a djinn inside him, for he had not only become accustomed to living with Casimir, he was actually feeling grateful to him. So far, he had to admit, the djinn had more than kept his side of the bargain.
When he’d woken up to his first morning in Edinburgh, his first wish had been for cash. He was quite sure that Edinburgh would have all the big music stores and as he was desperate to bring his CD collection up to date, he’d asked for a hundred pounds. Casimir, however, had suggested a thousand. A hundred pounds, he’d advised, didn’t go far nowadays. The bundles of five pound notes that had then thumped down on the bathmat made Lewis blink and, worried that Mrs Sinclair might prowl round upstairs to see if he really was keeping his room tidy, he had gathered them up and hurriedly locked them in his suitcase.
As it turned out, he hadn’t been able to go shopping that morning as his parents had taken him with them to the hospital to visit his Gran. The hospital was huge and when Lewis got to the ward, he found it hard to believe that his kind, friendly grandmother had turned into the frail, shrunken old lady lying in the narrow bed. The change in her had frightened him and his face had been thoughtful as he’d left the hospital.
The next morning he’d asked Casimir anxiously if he could make his Gran better. Casimir’s lips tightened and he gave Lewis a most peculiar look. What Lewis didn’t know was that in the world of magic, Casimir was generally regarded as being proud, arrogant and aloof by his fellow magicians. Indeed, his opinion of himself was so high that he very rarely deigned to speak to anyone less well-bred than himself. He was certainly not the type to be involved in good deeds, neither was he prone to being charitable; rather the opposite, if the truth be told. Casimir, therefore, was a good deal taken aback to find that Lewis quite naturally expected him to behave with compassion.
A bargain, however, was a bargain and Casimir was not ignoble. So he’d looked at Lewis strangely and said that it’d take some time but that yes, he could make his Gran better. And that afternoon, Lewis found his mother in the living room, her eyes shining with hope. The hospital had just phoned to say that his Gran was responding surprisingly well to new drugs and that she seemed set to recover.
Lewis, therefore, was feeling really grateful to the djinn and went quite happily into the bedroom where he found the magic carpet draped over one of the radiators, steaming gently. He looked at it dismissively for although he knew it was a magic carpet it was, as far as he was concerned, certainly nothing to write home about. It was a pitiful thing, really, he thought; thin, patched and almost threadbare in places. He could see from Casimir’s face in the mirror, however, that he was really upset at the state of the carpet.
“What happened?” Casimir asked the carpet, his voice choked with emotion. “What happened to you?”
Lewis didn’t understand half of the story that poured from the carpet. What on earth, he wondered, were storm carriers and who were Prince Kalman and Lord Rothlan?
Casimir’s face was a picture for he was looking totally devastated, furiously angry and filled with concern for his carpet, all at the same time. Lewis lifted it from the radiator. He could see from the colours and the weave that it must, at one time, have been a beautiful carpet. Now, however, its colours were faded, it was patched in several places and its silken threads were so thin as to be threadbare.
He looked at Casimir in the little mirror. “Look,” he said, “I haven’t had my wish today and since it means so much to you, my wish is that your carpet will be made new again.”
Casimir looked at Lewis blankly. As a powerful magician, he wasn’t exactly used to being on the receiving end of simple, everyday acts of kindness and Lewis’s words rather took him aback. Then, as their import hit home, his expression cleared and, too full of emotion to speak, he merely nodded.
Lewis felt the carpet stir under his fingers and watched in amazement as it started to thicken perceptibly. Its colours brightened and grew stronger and its silken threads gleamed and shone in the light of his bedside lamp. When it was whole again, the carpet rippled with joy and took off round the room, whizzing around in circles until it forgot itself completely and wrapped itself round Lewis in sheer joy.
“How would you like to take a trip on the carpet?” Casimir asked, his usually sour face smiling and happy. “After you’ve had your breakfast, that is.”
“Won’t people see me?”
Casimir shook his head. “It’s a magic carpet,” he said, “and as you’ll be travelling with me inside you, you’ll be invisible!”
Lewis thought about it. “I could,” he said. “Mum and Dad are going back to the hospital today and then visiting some aunt or other.”
“Then we’ll wait until they’ve left. How’s that?”
“Great,” Lewis said, and went downstairs feeling happier than he had for a long time.
Flying on the carpet was cold, but fun. It hadn’t needed Casimir to tell him that it was freezing outside for Edinburgh, covered in an unseasonably early fall of snow, had turned into a fairytale city overnight. At Casimir’s suggestion, he’d spread a blanket over the carpet to keep it warm and put on a couple more sweaters. Now, zipped up in his anorak with the hood pulled tightly round his face, he peered over the edge of the carpet as they passed over Princes Street, the snowy ramparts of Edinburgh Castle and the turreted splendour of George Heriot’s School. He looked at it with interest for once the October holiday finished he would be going there for the remainder of the term. His mother had already bought him the uniform! The snow-covered slopes of the Meadows floated by underneath the carpet and then more houses but it was only when they crossed the City Bypass and continued to head north that Lewis realized that it was not just taking him for a short flight round the city. He fished in a pocket and brought out the small mirror.
“Where are we going?” he asked anxiously, as Casimir’s face appeared. “Where are you taking me?”
“We’re going to visit my house,” Casimir said, soothingly.
“Where is it? Is it far?”
“Quite a long way. I should have told you, I know, but I haven’t been there for hundreds of years and, well … I’d like to see what it’s like now.”
There wasn’t much Lewis could say to this but if the magician had a house of his own that was miles away from Edinburgh, he saw future problems looming and as the hours passed and the carpet showed no signs of slowing down, he started to get really worried.
“Casimir,” he demanded, “is it much further? At this rate it’ll be dark by the time we get back to Edinburgh! My mum and dad will freak! Especially after what happened at Al Antara. I don’t want to get into any more trouble if I can possibly avoid it!”
“Almost there,” Casimir promised, but it was actually a good half hour before the carpet lost height and started to circle a snow-covered mountainside.
Lewis fished out the mirror again. “Are we here?” he asked. “I don’t see any houses.”
Casimir looked over the slopes of the bleak mountain and spoke, through Lewis, to the carpet which started to circle the area very slowly. Then it stopped.
“Get off the carpet and move forward, Lewis. Slowly! Hold your hands out in front of you and stop when you touch something.”
“But … but there’s nothing to touch,” Lewis said. “The mountain’s …” He stopped suddenly as his hand touched something invisible that sent a shock through him. “I’m touching something, Casimir. It’s …” he moved his hand and walked round the object, “it’s like a pillar. Look, my footprints have made a circle in the snow.”
Casimir looked through Lewis’s eyes at the carpet. “Where did you come from, if it wasn’t from Ardray?” he asked.
The carpet trembled. “Old Agnes mended me,” it said. “Prince Kalman asked me what had happened when you were fleeing from the storm carriers and … and I told him. But he didn’t keep me. He didn’t need to, master. He has his own carpet. So I stayed with Agnes. Master, I didn’t know that this had happened to Ardray, I swear it! If she knew, she didn’t tell me!”
“What has happened to Ardray?” interrupted Lewis. “Isn’t your house here any more?”
“My house and estates have been destroyed,” Casimir said. “This … this pillar of energy that you touched is all that is left of them.”
“Was it … magicked?” Lewis asked curiously.
“You could call it that,” Casimir said, looking old, tired and decidedly worried. “There’s only one way to find out. We’ll get the carpet to fly around and see if we can spot any goblins. There might be some left lurking around to tell us what went on!”
The carpet took off again and this time flew high among the snowy peaks. Lewis hugged himself as the biting cold chilled him to the bone.
“There,” Casimir said. “That’s a goblin’s cave if ever I saw one!”
The carpet hovered outside the cave and Lewis retched at the foul, disgusting smell that came from it. He’d never met a goblin before and wasn’t particularly anxious to meet one now. But, since Casimir was inside him, he had no choice but to go into the cave holding the mirror in front of him. The place stank to the heavens and Lewis would have given anything to be able to turn round and leave. From the mirror, Casimir spoke magic words in a strange voice and, from the back of the cave there was a rustling and heaving as a ghastly creature rose from its dark depths and moved into the dim light that filtered in from outside. Lewis felt sick. The goblin was green and totally revolting, with gleaming red eyes, sharp teeth and claws. It smelt foul and was covered in sagging folds of knobbly, papery skin that rustled as it moved.
“Tell me!” Casimir demanded from the mirror. “Tell me what happened at Ardray!”
The goblin stared in blank amazement at Casimir’s face in the mirror. “Prince Casimir!” it slavered, gnashing sharp teeth. “You have returned!”
“As you see,” snapped the prince.
The goblin bowed and grovelled in front of him. “Ardray is no more, Master,” it said sorrowfully.
“Tell me about it!” demanded Casimir. “At once!”
The goblin fawned at his feet in a stinking rustle of flesh. “Your son, Prince Kalman, found the Sultan’s Crown and kept it in the room of mirrors but Lord Rothlan and the Turkish Sultan came and took it from him.”
“You were there?”
“Yes, master. I saw the Sultan take the crown from the Prince. Rothlan’s eagle, Amgarad, attacked him and he tried to escape through one of the mirrors.”
“And?”
“It was locked on the other side, Master. They trapped him between mirrors and Ardray shook with the violence of it. I was lucky to get away before it disintegrated altogether.”
Casimir’s face suddenly grew strained and old. He looked at the goblin. “You don’t happen to know where the mirror was set for, do you?”
“Oh, yes, Master. There was never any secret about it,” the goblin looked surprised. “We all knew that the mirrors were set for Edinburgh!”
9. Shades of the Past
A howling blizzard had blown throughout the night and as Neil and Clara sailed up the High Street on their magic carpets, skimming between the white roofs of the picturesque old houses, they looked around in wonder. It was like fairyland. The whole of Edinburgh lay deep in drifts of snow that glinted crisp and white in the thin rays of a wintry sun.
Kitor shivered on Clara’s shoulder and shifted on his claws as she fastened the top button of her coat and stuck her gloved hands in her pockets. Although she couldn’t see him, she knew her magic carpet was following Neil’s and as it soared above a double-decker bus she crossed her fingers and hoped that their plan would work and they’d be able to get into the Close unseen.
When they reached the City Chambers, her carpet hovered uncertainly and then headed for the broad, arched passageway that led to the entrance. Despite the weather, Mary King’s Close seemed quite busy, with one or two huge, tourists buses parked outside. Clara watched as the swing-door suddenly swung open and then closed again. Good, she thought. That means Neil’s inside. Now it’s my turn. Choosing a time when the doorway was empty of people, Clara’s carpet sailed down so that she, too, could slip inside. It wasn’t quite plain sailing, however, and she had to hang on to her carpet as it suddenly tipped sideways to avoid a couple of teenagers. Kitor squawked in alarm as he dug his claws into her coat to keep his balance and some heads turned at the sudden noise but, as Kitor was invisible, they could see nothing. Clara sighed with relief. At least they were inside! Her carpet sailed round the entrance hall where people were clustered either waiting for the next tour to start or just wandering round looking at the displays and items for sale in the shop.
